January 14, 2009
Have A Heart, Thomas Hardy (1928)
On this day [Note: Jan. 13: I am behind a day], Thomas Hardy had his heart operated on. The patient didn't survive, but that was to be expected. The novelist had died two days before.
The reason Hardy's doctor and his assistant performed the procedure in the bedroom of Max Gate, Hardy's home, was to resolve a dispute over his final resting place. Hardy wanted to be buried beside his parents and his first wife at the parish church in Stinsford, but the government wanted the country's greatest author since Dickens to be cremated and interred in Westminster Abbey.
The decision by Hardy's second wife, Florence, to leave his heart in Dorchester horrified the nation, but caused a certain amount of bemusement locally, where the author's agnosticism and his "immoral" novels didn't sit well with the natives. Not only did it spawn a popular joke — on the Day of Judgment, God would demand in a Dorset accent, "Yer be ‘is ‘eart, but where be rest of ‘ee?" — but it probably inspired the legend of Hardy's heart and the cat.
The story goes that, after the heart was excised, it was set in a tin and placed on the kitchen table for delivery the next day. When the undertaker showed up, he was horrified to find the lid open and a very satisified cat sitting next to it. The quick-thinking undertaker fulfilled his charge by strangling the cat and burying it in Hardy's tomb.
No such thing happened, of course, but there is one possible inspiration for the story, because the actual tin used has since resurfaced, and on the lid is depicted several kittens in the act of hunting. Beneath is the ironic caption, "In disgrace."
Born: Paul Gavarni, caricaturist, lithographer, Paris, 1804; Horatio Alger Jr., children's author, Chelsea, Mass., 1832; A(lfred) B(ertram) Guthrie, novelist, Bedford, Ind., 1901; Amanda Cross (ps. Carolyn Heilbrun), mystery author, literary critic, professor, East Orange, N.J., 1926; Edmund White, novelist, editor, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1940; Jay McInerney, novelist, Hartford, Conn., 1955; Elizabeth Searle, philosopher, novelist, short-story writer, Philadelphia, 1962.
Died: James Joyce, novelist, short-story writer, Zurich, Switzerland, 1941; A(lfred) E(dgar) Coppard, poet, short-story writer, London, 1957; Brooks Atkinson, journalist, drama critic, editor, memoirist, Huntsville, Ala., 1984; Sterling Brown, poet, literary critic, Takoma Park, Md., 1989.
Quote for the Day: Sometimes I think words are like girlfriends — can't find a good one to save your life when you're actually looking, but when you don't need any they're falling out of the goddamned trees! — Jay McInerney, who was born today in 1955.
Also from "Writers 365":
- Great Moments in Literary Sex (Part I)
- Great Moments in Literary Sex (Part II)
- Faulkner Goes Postal (1924)
- Babbitt Does Stockholm (1930)
- C.S. Lewis: Can You Hear Me, God? (1931)
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