'Under the Greenwood Tree' by Thomas Hardy: A Review

Having recently finished Hardy’s Under the Greenwood Tree, I thought it deserved a review.

The novella is a gentle story, nostalgic for the middle of the nineteenth century. Back then, music in church was a cooperative affair, as Hardy says in his 1898 preface: “displacement of these ecclesiastical bandsmen by an isolated organist (often at first a barrel-organist) or harmonium player…the change has tended to stultify the professed aims of the clergy, its direct result being to curtail and extinguish the interests of the parishioners in church doings. Under the old plan, from half a dozen to ten full-grown players, in addition to the numerous more or less grown-up singers, were officially occupied in trying their best to make it an artistic outcome of the combined musical taste of the parish.”

Miss Fancy Day is appointed as the new school teacher in the village of Melstock, but the plot stems from Dick Dewy’s subsequent naive fascination with her. Changes were affecting all villages in the middle of the 19th Century - the “old ways” were disappearing, a common Hardy lament. Villagers had sung and played music in the parish church for centuries, but the vicar is persuaded (by one of Fancy’s suitors) that she should play the harmonium and thus replace their ramshackle band instruments. Unlike many of Hardy’s longer works, though, Under the Greenwood Tree presents all this with warm humour, complete with comical descriptions of some of the choristers. For example, Tommy Leaf was:

“a human skeleton and a smock-frock, who was very awkward in his movements, apparently on account of having grown so very fast that before he had had time to get used to his height, he was higher.”

At a Christmas cider-imbued gathering of the choir in the Dewy household we are introduced to grandfather William, a “cleaver-up of dead apple wood and a bass viol player,” good-hearted and simple-minded. James, the other grandfather, a mason, wearing his “long linen apron reaching almost to his toes, corduroy breaches and gaiters” rehearses for Christmas Day singing with the others:

“Old William Dewy, with the violoncello, played the bass; his grandson Dick the treble violin; and Reuben (Dewy) and Michael Mail the tenor and second violins respectively. The singers consisted of four men and seven boys, upon whom devolved the task of carrying and attending to the lanterns and holding the books open for the players.”

Everything is described in loving detail, including this debate about the relative merits of various musical instruments:

“’Strings alone would have held their ground against all the new comers in creation’ (‘True, true!’ said Bowman.) ‘But clar’nets was death’ (‘Death they was!’ said Mr. Penny.) ‘And harmonions,’ William continued in a louder voice, and getting excited by these signs of approval, ‘harmonions and barrel organs’ (‘Ah!’ and groans from Spinks) ‘be miserable – what shall I call ‘em? – miserable …’

‘Sinners,’ suggested Jimmy, who made large strides like the men, and did not lag behind like the other little boys.

‘Miserable dumbledores!’

‘Right, William, and so they be – miserable dumbledores!’ said the choir with unanimity!’”

Nothing too serious happens: the confrontation between Reuben Dewy and his delegation of singers and players to try to get the vicar to change his decision, in which Dewy puts his case forcibly, results in   the vicar postponing the change until Michaelmas. The villagers consider this to be a triumph, and are full of Parson Mayble’s praises on the way home, complimenting their own abilities:

“‘Now, that was very nice o’ the man’.

‘Proper nice – out and out nice. The fact is,’ said Reuben confidentially, ‘ ‘tis how you take a man. Everybody must be managed. Parson Mayble and I were as good friends all through it as if we’d been s’orn brothers. Ay, the man’s well enough; ‘tis what’s in his head that spoils him.’”

The real focus is the love match. Fancy is wooed by both the vicar and Mr Shiner in addition to Dick, but there is no threat to the looming happy ending. Meanwhile, we are gently drawn into a world which no longer exists but which contains very recognisable and accurately drawn human beings.

I found the book to be charming, funny and a warm portrait of a bygone age.