The Complete Hardy 6: Two on a Tower

Hardy's 'astronomy book' is almost idyllic in its first part with the devoted stargazer, Swithin St. Cleeve, allowed to use Lady Viviette Constantine's tower as his observatory. It's Hardy, though, and while we don't want their clandestine attachment to be spoiled, he's already put differences in age and social class between them never mind laying down future difficulties to come.

We should not be surprised that Viviette is not yet quite as much of a widow as she thought and in part 2, Hardy piles on the agony with Swithin's unexpected inheritance being conditional on not marrying until he's 25 because his 'deus ex machina' misogynist uncle takes a dim view of women. Viviette has a brother whose mean suspicions are not unfounded. In a social/romantic chain not unlike the much better done plan of The Woodlanders, Swithin is provided with the distraction of Tabitha Lark while Lady Constantine, some might say, could take the older bishop as a more appropriate husband. It's never easy.

However, we do believe that Swithin and Viviette are well-suited and are only threatened by outside forces that ought not to interfere with what looks like a genuine match. It gives rise, though, to some brilliantly contrived moments like when she, secretly married, can neither sign a letter as 'Constantine' or 'St Cleeve', or her brother's devious but failed plot to reveal their mutual devotion. What even we don't know is the extent of its consummation, as we do in Tess, but even that is neither a problem or really the point.  

Two on a Tower is still a wonderful book and wherever it finds itself ranked in the Hardy novels, one would wish it could be higher. Perhaps it is 'minor' but the background of astronomy as a way of reflecting on human, earthbound affairs, the implacable forces that either govern our fates or don't even care to, is almost too good while Hardy, like fate and the universe itself is too cruel.

It is customary for Hardy's main characters to make their inexorable way to their often tragic ends but Two on a Tower maintains its suspense until the last page with a number of outcomes still seemingly possible. Swithin and Viviette might yet spend the rest of their lives together, older and wiser; they might go separate ways and prefigure Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach - Hardy puts in some moving pages while such things are still possible and I think it might have made for a more profound story if he'd chosen either of those options. But, no, he is of a tragic disposition and if he gives us a glance of those possibilities it is only so that he can take them away. It still doesn't seem to me 'minor', though, and deserves more credit and attention than it gets.