"After Emma’s death in late November 1912, Hardy revisited Cornwall in early March 1913, almost exactly the 43rd anniversary of their first meeting there in 1870 (hence the dates in the poem’s subtitle). He wrote in volume I of his disguised autobiography: ‘March 10 (1870) Went with ELG (Emma Lavinia Gifford) to Beeny Cliff. She on horseback … On the cliff … the run down to the edge.’ The first three stanzas recreate the colour, energy and joy of their blossoming relationship in March 1870; the last two bring us to the present. In Some Recollections, Emma Hardy remembers ‘scampering up and down the hills on my beloved mare alone, wanting no protection, the rain going down my back. … The villagers stopped to gaze when I rushed down the hills … for no one dared except myself to ride in such wild fearless fashion.’"
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"Beeny Cliff” is one of a set of elegies written by Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) following the death of his wife Emma (née Gifford), who died at their home, Max Gate, in Dorchester, Dorset, on 17th November 1912 at the age of 72. In March 1913 Hardy journeyed westwards to northCornwallto revisit the places where he had courted Emma 43 years previously. He wrote several poems during the trip, and others both before and afterwards, that poured from him as a response to her death, all of them appearing as “Poems 1912-13”, published in 1914.
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Beeny Cliff is a place that can be visited today, being little changed (if at all) from when Hardy walked the same cliff paths that present-day walkers can explore to admire the rugged scenery and the views out to sea. It is close toPentargonBay, that features in the poem “After a Journey”, and thechurch ofSt Juliot that Hardy, as a young architect’s assistant, had been sent to survey back in 1870, and where he met Emma, whose sister had married the rector of the parish.
Thomas and Emma married in 1874, but the marriage was not always happy and eventually the couple lived virtually parallel lives with Emma occupying her own rooms in the attic of Max Gate. Emma was in considerable pain towards the end of her life from impacted gallstones, and Thomas had tended to play down her symptoms, even refusing to see her on the day she died, having been told that she was desperately ill. It was his guilt and remorse following her death that inspired the series of poems of which “Beeny Cliff” is one.
The poem comprises five numbered stanzas, headed by the dates “March 1870 – March 1913”. Each stanza is a rhymed triplet.
The first two stanzas are as follows:
I O the opal and the sapphire of that wandering western sea, And the woman riding high above with bright hair flapping free – The woman whom I loved so, and who loyally loved me.
I I The pale mews plained below us, and the waves seemed far away In a nether sky, engrossed in saying their ceaseless babbling say, As we laughed light-heartedly aloft on that clear-sunned March day.
These set the scene of a time long ago when Thomas would have been standing looking out to sea when Emma rode up alongside him on her pony. The impression is of freshness and brightness, with her “hair flapping free” in the wind that blows off the sea. There are several references to colours,
“opal”, “sapphire”, “bright” and “pale”, and links between the couple on the clifftop and the sea far below, as the sea is “babbling” and the two lovers “laughed light-heartedly”.
There is an interesting use of the word “mews” here, as this is generally taken to mean stabling for horses, and the sea would have been throwing up “white horses” in the wind.
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The third stanza continues the theme:
III A little cloud then cloaked us, and there flew an irised rain, And the Atlantic dyed its levels with a dull misfeatured stain, And then the sun burst out again, and purples prinked the main.
It should be noted that the use of colour imagery is present in all three lines, as “an irised rain”, “dyed” and “stain” and “purples prinked the main”. It has been suggested (by Donald Davie, writing in 1972) that Hardy was, in the last of these examples, using a phrase taken from Virgil’s Aeneid to suggest that the purple light was from another, non-Earthly, dimension, and that this is a pointer to Emma’s current status as a spirit that haunts this place.
If that is so, it is an appropriate lead-in for the remaining two stanzas:
IV – Still in all its chasmal beauty bulks old Beeny to the sky, And shall she and I not go there once again now March is nigh, And the sweet things said in that March say anew there by and by?
V What if still in chasmal beauty looms that wild weird western shore, The woman now is – elsewhere – whom the ambling pony bore, And nor knows nor cares for Beeny, and will laugh there nevermore.
The time has now shifted forward by 43 years and Hardy is alone on the cliff that has not changed and never will.
The repeated expression “chasmal beauty” is interesting, in that it uses a word that is not in general usage, but means “relating to a chasm”. Beeny Cliff is a chasm in that it marks the sharp division between land and sea, and Hardy is reminded of the chasm between himself and Emma that can never be bridged now that she has gone.
There is also a sense that Hardy gets no comfort from being at this place, this “wild weird western shore”, because he does not feel Emma’s presence in the way that, for example, he felt atPentargonBayas described in “After a Journey”. In the fourth stanza the
emphasis is on the possibility of “sweet things” being said again on the clifftop, but the question is answered in the negative in the fifth stanza, with the realisation that Emma neither “knows nor cares” for Beeny Cliff in her present spiritual state.
“Beeny Cliff” is therefore a pessimistic poem in that the past cannot be recaptured here. There is a hint in the third stanza of the problems that the marriage encountered, although “a little cloud then cloaked us” refers primarily to the memory of the day in March 1870. However, the physical clouds were temporary, with the sun bursting out again, although the poet knew that the same was not true of the later clouds that would blight the marriage.
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There is also a hint of Hardy’s guilt at his part in the failure of the marriage, in that, in the first stanza, the word “loyally” refers to Emma’s love for him and not his for her. As he wrote that line Hardy must surely have been conscious of his own lack of loyalty.
The reader is left with “will laugh there nevermore”, and this clearly applies to both Emma and Thomas. The chasm that broke through the laughter was caused by his own actions, and the chasm that is Beeny Cliff proves to be a stark symbol of both separations, before Emma’s death and afterwards."
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The Poem: O the opal and the sapphire of that wandering western sea,
And the woman riding high above with bright hair flapping free –
The woman whom I loved so, and who loyally loved me.
The pale mews plained below us, and the waves seemed far away
In a nether sky, engrossed in saying their ceaseless babbling say,
As we laughed light-heartedly aloft on that clear-sunned March day.
A little cloud then cloaked us, and there flew an irised rain,
And the Atlantic dyed its levels with a dull misfeatured stain,
And then the sun burst out again, and purples prinked the main.
- Still in all its chasmal beauty bulks old Beeny to the sky,
And shall she and I not go there once again now March is nigh,
And the sweet things said in that March say anew there by and by?
What if still in chasmal beauty looms that wild weird western shore,
The woman now is - elsewhere - whom the ambling pony bore,
And nor knows nor cares for Beeny, and will laugh there nevermore.