Statement of Expert Adviser:
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1.
Brief Description of item(s)
A collection of working papers and records (annotated playscripts, prompt copies, actors’
parts, programmes, posters and miniature mock-up scenery), deriving from the adaptation
and staging of Thomas Hardy’s works by the Hardy Players (formerly the Dorchester
Dramatic and Debating Society), with input from Hardy himself, between 1908 and 1924.
Apart from some wear and tear normal for a group of working materials, the collection is in
good condition
2.
Context
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3.
Provenance: the collection was originally assembled by Thomas Henry Tilley, one of
the two local figures chiefly responsible for the productions (see further below).
Key literary and exhibition references: the adaptations are of course derived from
the works of a major 19th-20th century author and four of them (as detailed below)
were actually made by him. R. L. Purdy’s Thomas Hardy: a Bibliographical Study
(OUP, 1954). Appendix VI, lists the Hardy Players’ productions, and for Hardy’s own
dramatizations, see Marguerite Roberts, Hardy’s poetic drama and the theatre: the
Dynasts and the Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall (New York, 1965) and
her edition of Tess (University of Toronto, 1950); otherwise the adaptations remain
unpublished. Memoirs by former players, e.g. Norman J. Atkins (who played Alec
d’Urberville in Tess), Thomas Hardy and the Hardy Players (1980) and Norrie’s Tale:
an autobiography of the last of the Hardy Players (2006), witness to the continuing
interest in them. The Dorset County Museum has a display of associated items, of
which the centre piece is a miniature portable theatre used to try out the staging and
with which the miniature scenery in the present collection is probably to be
associated (see the image attached).
Waverley criteria
The collection meets the 1st Waverley criterion, in that it is so closely associated with the life
of a particular region, one given an enduring literary identity as Hardy’s Wessex, that its
departure would be a misfortune. It meets the 3rd Waverley criterion in being the most
important and coherent body of evidence surviving in this country for study of the dramatic
adaptation and staging of the works of Thomas Hardy and their reception by the local
community that inspired them.
DETAILED CASE
1.
Detailed description of item(s).
The collection contains material relating to all the Hardy Players’ productions, namely: The
Trumpet Major (1908, rev. 1912), Far from the Madding Crowd (1909), Mellstock Quire
(1910), Three Wayfarers (1911), The Distracted Preacher (1911), The Woodlanders (1913),
Wessex Scenes from the Dynasts (1916), The Return of the Native (1920), A Desperate
Remedy (1920), The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall (1923) and Tess of the
D’Urbervilles (1924). The largest group of adaptations was by Alfred Herbert Evans, a
Dorchester chemist, others were by Thomas Henry Tilley, builder, stonemason and Mayor of
Dorchester (a ‘real life of Mayor of Casterbridge’), while Thomas Hardy himself was
personally responsible for four:
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The Three Wayfarers: an adaptation of a short story performed professionally in
London prior to the Hardy Players performance
Wessex Scenes from the Dynasts: an adaptation of his verse drama, originally
staged in aid of the British and Russian Red Cross
The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall: the only original play Hardy wrote to
be performed by the Hardy Players
Tess of the d’Urbervilles: Hardy’s own adaptation of his best-loved novel.
Revised and annotated scripts (often the prompt copies), programmes and posters are
present for all the adaptations and some are represented by particularly rich groups. The
Trumpet Major group includes 8 pieces of miniature painted scenery (meticulously executed,
with folding doors, wings, etc.), which are probably to be associated with the model theatre
used in planning the staging (it was also sufficiently portable to take to Max Gate for
demonstration to Hardy). The Queen of Cornwall has Tilly’s prompt copy and 12 actors’ parts,
one an important association copy. Tess has a presentation copy of the programme from
Hardy to Tilly
2.
Detailed explanation of the outstanding significance of the
item(s).
The Hardy Players, Tilly justifiably claimed, have `a unique position amongst amateur
dramatic societies’. Their programme for the adaptation and staging of Hardy’s works is a
remarkable and sustained example of the appropriation of a major literary figure by the
community and the region that inspired him, carried on with his knowledge and consent and
sometimes with his direct participation. The present collection includes a manuscript
manifesto of the Hardy Players, said in the sale catalogue to be anonymous but actually
identified in an annotation as a draft by Tilly (and the finished version [California Riverside
H35] adds the important information that it was `corrected and approved’ by Hardy himself).
This states explicitly that the Hardy Players’ mission was to use Hardy’s works to promote a
sense of regional identity:
All that the works of Mr Hardy owe to the ancient dialect, customs, and folklore, the quaint
rustic wit & wisdom, the home-crafts & field crafts, … not only are these things dear to the
cast, but they are able to represent them on stage by the instinct of relationship. For they
are local men & women who, pursuing their daily rounds amid the Dorset dialect &
scenery, have been long familiarised with the speech, the dwellings & the habits of the
characters portrayed in the novels.
By endeavouring to represent the old-world life of Wessex the players are undoubtedly
performing a valuable literary & historical work … [They] not only help to preserve a rich
and philologically interesting dialect that may, under modern conditions of life, all too
quickly disappear, but to awaken in their audiences an interest in local history & literature
& encourage the study of what W. Barnes, the Dorsetshire poet so admirably termed
`speechcraft’.
The memoir by Norman Atkins makes the point more vividly. He records how the Dorchester
Debating and Dramatic Society, `a very strong and well supported Society’ which met once a
week in winter, mutated into the Hardy Players; he describes visits to the Hardys at Max Gate
and the playing of Gertrude Bugler, their most celebrated performer (whose attraction for the
elderly Hardy caused his wife some heart-burning); but `mention must also be made of Harry
Tilley’s Granfer Cantle, which was ably supported by W. R. Bawler, Tom Pouncy, A. C. Cox,
R. C. Barrow and others, all genuine country characters whom I knew and loved. This was
the true Hardy, portrayed by people who lived and breathed the atmosphere of Egdon Heath
and Wessex’. The powerful sense of locality is confirmed by the Lord Chamberlain’s records
at the British Library; the plays were all licensed for local performance, and in one of the
reports the Examiner comments that the play might only work in a Wessex context, as there
audiences would be fully aware of the background behind the story.
These records, with their annotated prompt copies and actors’ parts, giving the dialogue as
actually delivered and the stage business as performed, and their direct evidence of the
scenery and settings, are the closest we can now get to the experience. They all linked to
actual stagings at the Corn Exchange Dorchester, the Pavilion Theatre Weymouth and other
localities (eg, `Barton Lodge, Cerne Abbas, kindly lent by Mrs Digby: A Real Hardy Scene in
Natural Surroundings by Real Hardy Folk in the depth of Hardy Country’, according to one
poster for Mellstock Quire); the attractively produced programmes incorporate photographs of
the places Hardy used as his settings; the posters (some in mint condition) advertise booking
at local shops. The whole collection, having been hitherto unavailable for study, has a great
deal to yield for research, and much of it, particularly the posters and scenery, calls for public
display.
The collection is also important for study of Hardy himself, whose involvement with the
Players was closer than he sometimes admitted (at least one document in the present
collection has annotations attributed to him). The whole enterprise, particularly in his later
years provided him with an outlet for his fascination with the theatre and a form of continuing
participation in the local community; and `well into the 1920s it played a very significant part in
the popular and more serious press fascination with England’s most enduring and eminent
Victorian author’: http://aix1.uottawa.ca/~kgwilson/hplayers.htm).
James Stevens-Cox’s collection relating to the Hardy Players was originally larger. But in
1972 he sold part of it (including photo albums, drawings, some correspondence and prop
notebooks) to the library of the University of California Riverside (www.oac.cdlib.org: Archives
Collection 216), retaining the present group in his own collection. In the meantime a further
group, compiled by two of the players, E. J. Stevens and his daughter, was exported to
Princeton University Library. No comparable group is known in a public collection in this
country. Even the Dorset County Museum, otherwise `the largest and most important Hardy
archive in the world’ (Index of English Literary Manuscripts 1800-1900, IV.2, p. 5), having
been endowed by Hardy’s widow with the surviving papers from Max Gate, has a rather
fragmented record, with only one prompt book (for The Trumpet Major), intermittent actors’
parts and some adaptations not represented (ibid: `Thomas Hardy: Dramatic Works’, pp. 1516 and HrT 1607-1671, passim). It does however include important evidence, in the form of
stage schemes and an annotated script, of Hardy’s involvement with Wessex Scenes from
the Dynasts and Return of the Native in particular (eg, HrT 1630.3 and 1655), which calls for
comparison with the present collection. So it is now the case that two US collections have
better holdings for this unique aspect of Hardy’s work than the region which inspired it and
provided its characters and settings. If the present group should also go from private to
overseas ownership, this impoverishment of the regional and national record would be
permanent.
I will attend the hearing on 2 December and expect to be accompanied by Dr Kathryn
Johnson, Curator of Theatre Collections at the British Library
Frances Harris
Head of Modern Historical Manuscripts, British Library
17 November 2009