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1891
Tess of the D'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented
by Thomas Hardy
W. W. Norton & Company Inc., New York 1965
'... Poor wounded name! My bosom as a bed
Shall lodge thee.'
— W. S HAKSPEARE .
E XPLANATORY N OTE TO THE F IRST E DITION
The main portion of the following story appeared — with slight modifications — in the Graphic newspaper; other chapters,
more especially addressed to adult readers, in the Fortnightly Review and the National Observer , as episodic sketches. My
thanks are tendered to the editors and proprietors of those periodicals for enabling me now to piece the trunk and limbs of the
novel together, and print it complete, as originally written two years ago.
I will just add that the story is sent out in all sincerity of purpose, as representing on the whole a true sequence of things;
and I would ask any too genteel reader who cannot endure to have it said what everybody thinks and feels, to remember a well-
worn sentence of St. Jerome's: If an offence come out of the truth, better is it that the offence come than that the truth be
concealed.
November 1891
T. H.
P REFACE TO THE F IFTH AND L ATER E DITIONS
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,
[p. 2]
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
objections both to the matter and to the rendering.
The more austere of these maintain a conscientious difference of opinion concerning, among other things, subjects fir 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 an impression, not an argument; and there the matter must rest; as one is reminded
Tess of the d’Urbervilles
2
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 1 that to exclaim illogically against the gods,
[p. 3]
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 flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;
They kill us for their sport. 2
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 a 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 tale-teller, 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. 3 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. 4 Such shiftings
often begin in sentiment, and such sentiment sometimes begins in a novel.
July 1892.
T.H.
Shakespeare, King Lear, IV.i.36-37.
3 Exodus xx:17: ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house *** thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant *** nor his ox,
nor his ass ***.’
4 Shakespeare, Hamlet, V.i.146: ‘The age is grown so picked that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the
courtier, he galls his kibe,’
5 Psalms cxv:17: ‘The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence.’
6
It would have been better not to write it.
___________________________
The foregoing remarks were written during the early career of this story, when a spirited public and private criticism of its
points was still fresh to the feelings. The pages are allowed to stand for what they are worth, as something once said; but
probably they would not have been written now. Even in the short time which has elapsed since the book was first published,
some of the critics who provoked the reply have ‘gone down into silence,’ 5 as if to remind one of the infinite unimportance of
both their say and mine.
January 1895
[p. 4]
The present edition of this novel contains a few pages that have never appeared in any previous edition. When the detached
episodes were collected as stated in the preface of 1891, these pages were overlooked, though they were in the original
manuscript. They occur in Chapter X.
Respecting the sub-title, to which allusion was made above, I may add that it was appended at the last moment, after
reading the final proofs, as being the estimate left in a candid mind of the heroine’s character — an estimate that nobody would
be likely to dispute. It was disputed more than anything else in the book. Melius fuerat non scribere . 6 But there it stands.
The novel was first published complete, in three volumes, in November 1891.
March 1912
1 Andrew Lang.
2
Tess of the d’Urbervilles
3
[p. 5]
P HASE THE F IRST — T HE M AIDEN
I
O N AN EVENING in the latter part of May a middle-aged man was walking homeward from Shaston to the village of Marlott, 7 in
the adjoining Vale of Blakemore or Blackmoor. The pair of legs that carried him were rickety, and there was a bias in his gait
which inclined him somewhat to the left of a straight line. He occasionally gave a smart nod, as if in confirmation of some
opinion, though he was not thinking of anything in particular. An empty egg-basket was slung upon his arm, the nap of his hat
was ruffled, a patch being quite worn away at its brim where his thumb came in taking it off. Presently he was met by an
elderly parson astride on a gray mare, who, as he rode, hummed a wandering tune.
“Good night t’ee,” said the man with the basket.
“Good night, Sir John,” said the parson.
The pedestrian, after another pace or two, halted, and turned round.
“Now, sir, begging your pardon; we met last market-day on this road about this time, and I said ‘Good night,’ and you
made reply ‘ Good night, Sir John ,’ as now.”
“I did,” said the parson.
“And once before that — near a month ago.”
“I may have.”
“Then what might your meaning be in calling me ‘Sir John’ these different times, when I be plain Jack Durbeyfield, the
haggler?” 8
The parson rode a step or two nearer.
“It was only my whim,” he said; and, after a moment’s hesitation: “It was on account of a discovery I made some little time
ago, whilst I was hunting up pedigrees for the new county history. I am Parson Tringham, the antiquary, of Stagfoot Lane.
Don’t you really know, Durbeyfield, that you are the direct lineal representative of the ancient and knightly family of the
d’Urbervilles, who derive their descent from Sir Pagan d’Urberville, that renowned knight who came from Normandy with
William the Conqueror, as appears by Battle Abbey roll?” 9
[p. 6]
“Never heard it before, sir.”
“Well, it’s true. Throw up your chin a moment, so that I may catch the profile of your face better. Yes, that’s the
d’Urberville nose and chin — a little debased. Your ancestor was one of the twelve knights who assisted the Lord of
Estremavilla in Normandy in his conquest of Glamorganshire. Branches of your family held manors over all this part of
England; their names appear in the Pipe Rolls 10 in the time of King Stephen. In the reign of King John one of them was rich
enough to give a manor to the Knights Hospitallers; and in Edward the Second’s time your forefather Brian was summoned to
Westminster to attend the great Council there. You declined a little in Oliver Cromwell’s time, but to no serious extent, and in
Charles the Second’s reign you were made Knights of the Royal Oak for your loyalty. Aye, there have been generations of Sir
Johns among you, and if knighthood were hereditary, like a baronetcy, as it practically was in old times, when men were
knighted from father to son, you would be Sir John now.”
“Ye don’t say so!”
“In short,” concluded the parson, decisively smacking his leg with his switch, “there’s hardly such another family in
England.”
“Daze my eyes, and isn’t there?” said Durbeyfield. “And here have I been knocking about, year after year, from pillar to
post, as if I was no more than the commonest feller in the parish. ... And how long hev this news about me been knowed,
Pa’son Tringham?”
The clergyman explained that, as far as he was aware, it had quite died out of knowledge, and could hardly be said to be
known at all. His own investigations had begun on a day in the preceding spring when, having been engaged in tracing the
vicissitudes of the d’Urberville family, he had observed Durbeyfield’s name on his waggon, and had thereupon been led to
make inquiries, till he had no doubt on the subject.
“At first I resolved not to disturb you with such a useless piece of information,” said he. “However, our impulses are too
strong for our judgment sometimes. I thought you might perhaps know something of it all the while.”
“Well, I have heard once or twice, ’tis true, that my family had seen better days afore they came to Blackmoor. But I took
no notice o’t, thinking it to mean that we had once kept two horses where we now keep only one. I’ve got a wold 11 silver
spoon, and a wold graven seal at home, too; but, Lord, what’s a graven seal? ... And to think that I and these noble
d’Urbervilles was one flesh all the time. ’Twas said that my gr’t-grandfer had secrets, and didn’t care to
The real names of these villages in Dorset, a country in the south of England, are Shaftsbury and Marnhull. Hardy began
to create the fictional county of “Wessex” in Far from the Madding Crowd (1874); and throughout all the Wessex novels the
geography is that of Dorset, Somerset, Wiltshire, and Devon, though most of the places were renamed. Dorchester, for
example, became “Casterbridge”; and in this novel Salisbury is called “Melchester” and Winchester, “Wintoncester”.
8
Pedler.
9 Battle Abbey was a Benedictine abbey founded by William the Conqueror near Hastings.
10
The great Rolls of the Exchequer, comprising the various “pipes” or enrolled accounts of sheriffs and others for a
financial year.
11
Old.
7
Tess of the d’Urbervilles
4
[p. 7]
talk of where he came from. ... And where do we raise our smoke, now, parson, if I may make so bold; I mean, where do we
d’Urbervilles live?”
“You don’t live anywhere. You are extinct — as a county family.”
“That’s bad.”
“Yes — what the mendacious family chronicles call extinct in the male line — that is, gone down — gone under.”
“Then where do we lie?”
“At Kingsbere-sub-Greenhill: rows and rows of you in your vaults, with your effigies under Purbeck-marble 12 canopies.”
“And where be our family mansions and estates?”
“You haven’t any.”
“Oh? No lands neither?”
“None; though you once had ’em in abundance, as I said, for your family consisted of numerous branches. In this county
there was a seat of yours at Kingsbere, and another at Sherton, and another at Millpond, and another at Lullstead, and another
at Wellbridge.”
“And shall we ever come into our own again?”
“Ah — that I can’t tell!”
“And what had I better do about it, sir?” asked Durbeyfield, after a pause.
“Oh — nothing, nothing; except chasten yourself with the thought of ‘how are the mighty fallen.’ 13 It is a fact of some
interest to the local historian and genealogist, nothing more. There are several families among the cottagers of this county of
almost equal lustre. Good-night.”
“But you’ll turn back and have a quart of beer wi’ me on the strength o’t, Pa’son Tringham? There’s a very pretty brew in
tap at The Pure Drop — though, to be sure, not so good as at Rolliver’s.”
“No, thank you — not this evening, Durbeyfield. You’ve had enough already.” Concluding thus, the parson rode on his
way, with doubts as to his discretion in retailing this curious bit of lore.
When he was gone, Durbeyfield walked a few steps in a profound reverie, and then sat down upon the grassy bank by the
roadside, depositing his basket before him. In a few minutes a youth appeared in the distance, walking in the same direction as
that which had been pursued by Durbeyfield. The latter, on seeing him, held up his hand, and the lad quickened his pace, and
came near.
“Boy, take up that basket! I want ’ee to go on an errand for me.”
The lath-like stripling frowned. “Who be you, then, John Durbeyfield, to order me about and call me ‘boy’? You know my
name as well as I know yours!”
[p. 8]
“Do you, do you? That’s the secret — that’s the secret! Now obey my orders, and take the message I’m going to charge’ ee
wi’. ... Well, Fred, I don’t mind telling you that the secret is that I’m one of a noble race — it has been just discovered by me
this present afternoon, P.M.’ And as he made the announcement, Durbeyfield, declining from his sitting position, luxuriously
stretched himself out upon the bank among the daisies.
The lad stood before Durbeyfield, and contemplated his length from crown to toe.
“Sir John d’Urberville — that’s who I am,” continued the prostrate man. “That is if knights were baronets — which they
be. ’Tis recorded in history all about me. Dost know of such a place, lad, as Kingsbere-sub-Greenhill?”
“Yes. I’ve been there to Greenhill Fair.”
“Well, under the church of that city there lie — ”
“’Tisn’t a city, the place I mean; leastwise ’twasn’t when I was there — ’twas a little one-eyed, blinking sort o’ place.”
“Never you mind the place, boy, that’s not the question before us. Under the church of that parish lie my ancestors —
hundreds of ’em — in coats of mail and jewels, in gr’t lead coffins weighing tons and tons. There’s not a man in the county o’
South-Wessex that’s got grander and nobler skillentons in his family than I.”
“Oh?”
“Now take up that basket, and go on to Marlott, and when you come to The Pure Drop Inn, tell ’em to send a horse and
carriage to me immed’ately, to carry me hwome. And in the bottom o’ the carriage they be to put a noggin o’ rum in a small
bottle, and chalk it up to my account. And when you’ve done that goo on to my house with the basket, and tell my wife to put
away that washing, because she needn’t finish it, and wait till I come hwome, as I’ve news to tell her.”
As the lad stood in a dubious attitude, Durbeyfield put his hand in his pocket, and produced a shilling, one of the
comparatively few that he possessed.
“Here’s for your labour, lad.”
This made a difference in the young man’s estimate of the position.
“Yes, Sir John. Thank ’ee. Anything else I can do for ’ee, Sir John?”
“Tell ’em at hwome that I should like for supper, — well, lamb’s fry if they can get it; and if they can’t, black-pot; and if
they can’t get that, well, chitterlings 14 will do.”
“Yes, Sir John.”
Samuel i:25.
14 Lamb’s fry, a product of lamb’s castration; black-pot, a sausage made of fat and blood; chitterlings, smaller intestines of
pigs, fried.
12 A hard limestone obtained from Purbeck, a peninsula on the Dorset coast.
13
Tess of the d’Urbervilles
5
[p. 9]
The boy took up the basket, and as he set out the notes of a brass band were heard from the direction of the village.
“What’s that?” said Durbeyfield. “Not on account o’ I?”
“’Tis the women’s club-walking, Sir John. Why, your da’ter is one o’ the members.”
“To be sure — I’d quite forgot it in my thoughts of greater things! Well, vamp 15 on to Marlott, will ye, and order that
carriage, and maybe I’ll drive round and inspect the club.”
The lad departed, and Durbeyfield lay waiting on the grass and daisies in the evening sun. Not a soul passed that way for a
long while, and the faint notes of the band were the only human sounds audible within the rim of blue hills.
II
T HE VILLAGE of Marlott lay amid the north-eastern undulations of the beautiful Vale of Blakemore or Blackmoor aforesaid, an
engirdled and secluded region, for the most part untrodden as yet by tourist or landscape-painter, though within a four hours’
journey from London.
It is a vale whose acquaintance is best made by viewing it from the summits of the hills that surround it — except perhaps
during the droughts of summer. An unguided ramble into its recesses in bad weather is apt to engender dissatisfaction with its
narrow, tortuous, and miry ways.
This fertile and sheltered tract of country, in which the fields are never brown and the springs never dry, is bounded on the
south by the bold chalk ridge that embraces the prominences of Hambledon Hill, Bulbarrow, Nettlecombe-Tout, Dogbury,
High Stoy, and Bubb Down. The traveller from the coast, who, after plodding northward for a score of miles over calcareous
downs and corn-lands, suddenly reaches the verge of one of these escarpments, is surprised and delighted to behold, extended
like a map beneath him, a country differing absolutely from that which he has passed through. Behind him the hills are open,
the sun blazes down upon fields so large as to give an unenclosed character to the landscape, the lanes are white, the hedges
low and plashed, the atmosphere colourless. Here, in the valley, the world seems to be constructed upon a smaller and more
delicate scale; the fields are mere paddocks, so reduced that from this height their hedgerows appear a network of dark green
threads overspreading the paler green of the grass. The atmosphere beneath is languorous, and is so tinged with azure that what
artists call the middle distance partakes also of that hue, while the horizon beyond is of the deepest ultramarine. Arable lands
are few and limited; with but slight exceptions the prospect is a broad rich mass of grass
[p. 10]
and trees, mantling minor hills and dales within the major. Such is the Vale of Blackmoor.
The district is of historic, no less than of topographical interest. The Vale was known in former times as the Forest of White
Hart, from a curious legend of King Henry III.’s reign, in which the killing by a certain Thomas de la Lynd of a beautiful white
hart which the king had run down and spared, was made the occasion of a heavy fine. In those days, and till comparatively
recent times, the country was densely wooded. Even now, traces of its earlier condition are to be found in the old oak copses
and irregular belts of timber that yet survive upon its slopes, and the hollow-trunked trees that shade so many of its pastures.
The forests have departed, but some old customs of their shades remain. Many, however, linger only in a metamorphosed
or disguised form. The May-Day dance, for instance, was to be discerned on the afternoon under notice, in the guise of the club
revel, or “club-walking,” as it was there called.
It was an interesting event to the younger inhabitants of Marlott, though its real interest was not observed by the
participators in the ceremony. Its singularity lay less in the retention of a custom of walking in procession and dancing on each
anniversary than in the members being solely women. In men’s clubs such celebrations were, though expiring, less uncommon;
but either the natural shyness of the softer sex, or a sarcastic attitude on the part of male relatives, had denuded such women’s
clubs as remained (if any other did) of this their glory and consummation. The club of Marlott alone lived to uphold the local
Cerealia. 16 It had walked for hundreds of years, if not as benefit-club, as votive sisterhood of some sort; and it walked still.
The banded ones were all dressed in white gowns — a gay survival from Old Style days, when cheerfulness and May-time
were synonyms — days before the habit of taking long views had reduced emotions to a monotonous average. Their first
exhibition of themselves was in a processional march of two and two round the parish. Ideal and real clashed slightly as the sun
lit up their figures against the green hedges and creeper-laced house-fronts; for, though the whole troop wore white garments,
no two whites were alike among them. Some approached pure blanching; some had a bluish pallor; some worn by the older
characters (which had possibly lain by folded for many a year) inclined to a cadaverous tint, and to a Georgian 17 style.
In addition to the distinction of a white frock, every woman and girl carried in her right hand a peeled willow wand, and in
her left
[p. 11]
a bunch of white flowers. The peeling of the former, and the selection of the latter, had been an operation of personal care.
There were a few middle-aged and even elderly women in the train, their silver-wiry hair and wrinkled faces, scourged by
time and trouble, having almost a grotesque, certainly a pathetic, appearance in such a jaunty situation. In a true view, perhaps,
there was more to be gathered and told of each anxious and experienced one, to whom the years were drawing nigh when she
should say, “I have no pleasure in them,” 18 than of her juvenile comrades. But let the elder be passed over here for those under
whose bodices the life throbbed quick and warm.
15 Tramp.
16
Ecclesiastes xii:1, on old age.
Ceremony in honour of Ceres, the goddess of agriculture.
17 The fashion of the preceding century. The action of the novel takes place about 1880.
18

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