Page:Life of Thomas Hardy - Brennecke.pdf/199

 any of the novels. He belongs to the variety known as "organist-composers," and, as an all-around musician, proves a suitable vehicle for Hardy's opinions on the profession. Of his circumstances we learn that in comparison with starving, he thrived; "though the wealthy might possibly have said that in comparison with thriving he starved." Ethelberta's musicale provides a beautiful opportunity for criticism of the usual attitude of the cultured public towards the cultivated art they profess to admire.

Not only the unappreciative public, but the creative musician himself, when he loses sight of his ideals in his efforts towards material advancement, called forth most satiric comment from Hardy. Jude the Obscure, stirred to his soul by the strains of the hymn, "The Foot of the Cross," imagines its composer as one who would, of all men, understand his difficulties. The interview that he finally obtains is one of the great disillusionments of his life. In place of the full and throbbing soul he had thought to find, he meets a respectable, but shabby-genteel, and altogether mercenary spirit.

Although one may come across references to a great variety of musical subjects in the stories, including the ever-popular arts of singing, piano-playing, and the like, Hardy's preferences usually run to phases of musical expression that do not generally appear in metropolitan concert-halls. His interests lie rather in such things as the efforts of a humble shepherd with the flute he loves, in a soldier's affection for his martial trumpet, in that curious and almost extinct instrument, the serpent, or