The Trumpet-Major

Abstract

On March 22, 1878, before The Return of the Native had been quite completed, Hardy and Emma moved into 1 Arundel Terrace, Trinity Road, Upper Tooting.¹ The second Mrs Hardy once suggested that the decision to leave Sturminster Newton was prompted by Emma’s sensitivity to the scorn expressed by her brother at their living in a place so remote that a new species of bird on the lawn was an event.² According to Early Life (156), the new London location was adopted for professional purposes, Hardy having decided “that the practical side of his vocation of novelist demanded that he should have his headquarters in or near London”. The next sentence adds a more sombre note (“The wisdom of his decision, considering the nature of his writing, he afterwards questioned”), and the years at Tooting were to prove happy neither for Hardy’s work nor for his marriage. If Riverside Villa had witnessed a relatively idyllic period in his relationship with Emma, it was at 1 Arundel Terrace, Early Life (163) records, that “their troubles began”.