Her Life

Tryphena Sparks was born on 20 March, 1851 in Puddletown, Dorset. She was the
sixth and youngest child of James and Maria Sparks, Thomas Hardy's uncle and aunt.
Thus, she was Hardy's first cousin, along with her siblings Rebecca (1829-85), Emma
(1831-84), Martha (1834-1916), James (1836-1909), and Nathaniel (1843-1922).

Her father James (1805-74), originally of Dorchester, established his cabinet-making
business in Puddletown and on Christmas Day, 1828 married Maria Hand (1805-68),
the eldest sister of Hardy's mother Jemima. They reared their large family in a double
cob-and-thatch cottage at the bottom of Mill Street facing the river on what came to
be known as Sparks Corner. Here Maria carried on her dressmaking business as well.

Young Tryphena attended a small "Nonconformist" elementary school in Athelhampton,
about a mile east of Puddletown. Her mother supported the idea that this clever young
daughter should become a teacher, which was one of the chief means a Victorian girl
of her class could elevate herself (a bit) in society. Tryphena's first step in that direction
was to become, at age eleven in 1862, a monitor at the school. The next step was to
become a pupil-teacher, but the little school (about 60 students) already had one. As
her luck would have it a "National", or Church of England, school in Puddletown had
recently expanded into two large sections, one for girls and one for boys. Tryphena
was accepted late in 1866 as a pupil-teacher in the girls' section. In January, 1868,
however, she ran into trouble with the headmistress and was transferred to the boys'
section. Possibly her so-called "neglect of duty" was due to her mother's increasing
illness with consumption during this period, culminating in death in November, 1868.

We next find Tryphena as pupil-teacher in a small "British", or Nonconformist, school
in the hamlet of Coryates, hard by Blackdown Hill southwest of Dorchester. Here she
apparently completed her third qualifying year, November, 1868 to November, 1869,
for on 28 January, 1870 she entered the Stockwell Normal College in south London.
During this period, 1868-70, her alleged romance with Thomas Hardy occurred.
(Not everyone concurs with the Coryates interlude. Gittings covers it is some detail;
Seymour-Smith states that after the January, 1868 incident at Puddletown school,
"Tryphena disappears from the record until she turns up at Stockwell..."; Millgate
and others do not go into the matter at all. See "The Biographers" section below.)

Her two years at Stockwell went well, and she successfully completed her training on
15 December, 1871. She then applied for and obtained the position of headmistress at
Plymouth Day School, a large school for girls in Plymouth, Devon, about 80 miles west
of her native Puddletown. It was remarkable for a young woman, just out of college, to
obtain such a position and was a testament to her record of achievement at Stockwell.
Her salary was close to £100 a year, which must have seemed luxurious, having been
brought up among folks who felt fortunate to earn £25 a year. And she was a saver; in
her half dozen years as head teacher she accumulated the rather amazing sum of £400.

Tryphena began her lucrative new assignment in January, 1872, and about a year later
her eldest sister Rebecca came to live with her as housekeeper following an unfortunate
marriage to Frederick Payne, a Puddletown saddler, which quickly failed. It is natural,
perhaps, that Rebecca went to the only relative with the means to provide her support.
Tryphena continued to maintain Rebecca as part of the household, even after marriage,
until the latter's death in September, 1885 while they were living in Topsham, Devon.

Sometime during 1873 or 1874 Tryphena met Charles Frederick Gale, the proprietor
of a public house in Topsham, a village about 35 miles northeast of Plymouth near the
larger town of Exeter. By 1875 the courtship was in full swing, and they were married
on 15 December, 1877. Tryphena left her teaching position to set up housekeeping in
Topsham and raise a family. Four children were born to them: Eleanor Tryphena (Nellie)
in 1878, Charles in 1880, George in 1882, and Herbert in 1886. Sometime just after
the birth of her last child she suffered a "rupture" from which she never recovered. Her
ill health gradually grew more debilitating during the next few years, and Tryphens died
three days before her 39th birthday, on 17 March, 1890. She lies buried in Topsham.

These photos of Tryphena's gravesite are provided through the interest and the courtesy of
Dr. Alma Snow of Topsham, whose property they are, and to whom I remain most grateful.

(The Latin insciption "Mors Janua Vitae" may be translated "Death is the gateway to eternal life".)




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Her Romance

If romance it was, it germinated in the summer of 1867 when Hardy returned to Dorset.
When he went to London in April, 1862 to further his architectural career, Tryphena was
an eleven year old girl, attending school in Athelhampton. When he returned to his home
in Bockhampton in July, 1867, he found her to be a lively, intelligent, and striking young
woman of sixteen, well on her way to a teaching career in the local Puddletown school.

Theories regarding their relationship range from claims that they were mere companions
to assertions that they were serious lovers, though each of the major Hardy biographers
acknowledges that there is not sufficient information to surely describe their relationship.
Since no one knows with certainty what actually transpired, let us first dispense with the
most bizarre theory of them all; one found erroneous by serious, scholarly biographers.
A 1966 book titled Providence and Mr. Hardy, by Lois Deacon and Terry Coleman,
created quite a stir. Its principal thesis purports that Tryphena bore a child by Hardy in
1868, after a torrid affair during the summer and autumn of 1867. The first few chapters
provide a biography of Tryphena similar to the brief one presented above. At that point
the conjecture proceeds at full throttle. For those interested, Robert Gittings provides a
cogent analysis of all this in an appendix to his 1975 biography, Young Thomas Hardy.

It is reasonably certain that there was a mutual attraction, that they "walked out" on the
heath together, and that they possibly saw a good deal of each other while Hardy lived
in Weymouth, working for the architect Crickmay, and Tryphena taught in the nearby
village of Coryates during the summer of 1869. Did they become engaged? Was a ring
given her by Hardy, later given to Emma Gifford? Some say yes to both, some doubt it.
(It is generally accepted that the ring given to Emma had originally been destined for a
different girl. That girl may have been either Tryphena or Catherine (Cassie) Pole, with
whom Hardy also had been emotionally involved during these same pre-Emma years.)
It is known that the "romance" with Tryphena ended sometime after Hardy met Emma
Lavinia Gifford in Cornwall, and first became enchanted with her, in March, 1870. He
did not marry Emma until 1874, and some suggest that Hardy kept both women on the
string for a couple of years, visiting Tryphena in London while she was at Stockwell.

How close did the two become? Millgate states, "The two were often alone together,
and it would not be extraordinary if they made love. But there was certainly no child,
probably no formal engagement, and perhaps not even a dramatic parting but simply
a gradual erosion of intimacy..." Seymour-Smith says, "Unless some unimpeachable
evidence turns up, in the form of letters or diaries, speculation about his love life
before his marriage remains speculation". While Gittings expends much energy on the
matter, he is noncommital, saying, "What is certain is that Hardy became involved in
some way with Tryphena... What passed between [them]... is difficult to say". He
does contend, however, that Hardy bought her a ring, but what it meant is uncertain.
(See the "Credits and Sources" page for bibliographic references.)

Gittings speculates that Hardy may have seen Tryphena for the last time during the
Christmas season of 1872. She had journeyed home from Plymouth to visit her ailing
father, and Hardy at that time was living with his mother at home in Bockhampton.
(It was on this Christmas day that sister Rebecca married Frederick Payne.)

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Her Influence

It is easy, apparently, for some people to discern Tryphena's shadow in many of Hardy's
works, both in poems and in novels. Is she Tess? Is she Sue Bridehead? Is she the lost
love of "Neutral Tones"? Lois Deacon, for example, in Providence and Mr. Hardy, sees
Tryphena in numerous poems and nearly every novel, obsessively making her case page
after page. Such conjectures, of course, are the extreme and can hardly be taken seriously.

"Neutral Tones" is mentioned in order to illustrate a point. The poem was written during the
first half of 1867 while Hardy resided in London, and is generally understood to reflect his
breakup with a girl named Eliza Nicholls, with whom he had been infatuated for some time.
In July 1867, Hardy returned to Bockhampton and the "romance" with Tryphena began.
Lois Deacon attempts to make the case that the poem, dated by Hardy as 1867, actually
was written later, after his parting with Tryphena, and was back-dated to 1867 in memory
of the beginning of their love affair. This is wishful thinking of truly grotesque proportions.

We know practically nothing about Tryphena's personality. What we think we know of their
intimacy is in reality mere rumor, hearsay, and innuendo. We know not whether she was
heartbroken or unmoved upon learning of Hardy's marriage to Emma Gifford in 1874.
We have no indication whatever that Hardy "pined away" for her at any time in his life.
How, then, can we with any certainty maintain that Tryphena is found here or there in
the form of this or that female character, or is somewhere hidden in this or that poem?

One situation that has aroused considerable interest is in the case of Sue Bridehead
of the novel Jude the Obscure. Hardy himself, in his preface to the novel, stated that
"some of the circumstances" of the novel were suggested by the death of a woman in
1890. Tryphena died in March, 1890, prompting the speculation that it is she to whom
he refers. Just what "circumstances" were suggested is unknown. The idea that a pair
of cousins were lovers? The fact that the two women each were schoolteachers? The
matter is further complicated by a letter written by Hardy to Edmund Gosse in which is
implied that Florence Henniker provided something of Sue's character. Mrs. Henniker
was of a London sophistication far beyond anything Tryphena might ever have obtained.
So which lady is it? It could be a combination of both. It is a question not to be solved.

It is important to understand that a novelist (or poet) must of necessity make use of
personal experience, personal emotions, and the astute observation of others in order
to create believable, lifelike characters and situations. It is likely that Tryphena, along
with many others, played a role in Hardy's imagination as he wrote his many works.

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Her Poem

Presented below is the single poem that, with certainty, can be associated with Tryphena.
Clearly, it is Hardy's moving lament for the Tryphena whom he "lost" many long years ago.

Hardy first published it in 1898 in Wessex Poems under the title "Thoughts of Ph--a",
with the subtitle "At News of Her Death", dated March, 1890. In Selected Poems of
1916 he changed the title to "At News of a Woman's Death", and finally in Collected
Poems, published in 1919, to "Thoughts of Phena at News of Her Death".

This notation, dated 5 March, 1890, is found in The Early Life of Thomas Hardy.

"In the train on the way to London. Wrote the first four or six lines of
'Not a line of her writing have I'. It was a curious instance of sympathetic
telepathy. The woman whom I was thinking of - a cousin - was dying at
the time, and I quite in ignorance of it. She died six days later [in fact 12
days]. The remainder of the piece was not written till after her death."


Thoughts of Phena at News of Her Death

Not a line of her writing have I,
Not a thread of her hair,
No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby
I may picture her there;
And in vain do I urge my unsight
To conceive my lost prize
At her close, whom I knew when her dreams were upbrimming with light,
And with laughter her eyes.

What scenes spread around her last days,
Sad, shining, or dim?
Did her gifts and compassions enray and enarch her sweet ways
With an aureate nimb?
Or did life-light decline from her years,
And mischances control
Her full day-star; unease, or regret, or forebodings, or fears
Disennoble her soul?

Thus I do but the phantom retain
Of the maiden of yore
As my relic; yet haply the best of her--fined in my brain
It may be the more
That no line of her writing have I,
Nor a thread of her hair,
No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby
I may picture her there.

-----O-----

It is surely true that Hardy never knew Tryphena "as dame in her dwelling", but there are
indications that he may have visited Topsham after her death. Millgate states in a footnote
that "Hardy and his brother are said to have cycled to Topsham, near Exeter, in July, 1890
to visit their cousin Tryphena's grave and call on the bereaved family." The source is Lois
Deacon's book discussed above. Millgate gently goes on to say that "the journey was probably
made at a somewhat later date and could not, in any case, have been made by bicycle earlier
than 1896, the year in which Hardy first learned to ride". Deacon's description of the visit
implies that the journey from Dorchester was accomplished in a single day. It is 56 miles
(90 km) from town to town, a 112 mile round trip. That's a whole lot of exercise for one day.


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The Biographers

It is interesting to compare the writings of Hardy's principal biographers with respect to
Tryphena Sparks and her role -- her importance if you will -- in Thomas Hardy's life.

We can dispense quickly with Hardy's "autobiography". This biography, published after
his death under the authorship of his wife Florence, contains no mention of Tryphena by
name. The only reference that can be attributed to her has to do with his notation dated
5 March, 1890 in which he reflects on writing the first few lines of a poem while aboard
a train; the poem having to do with the death of "a cousin" (see "Her Poem" above).

We now turn to the principal modern biographers: Robert Gittings, Michael Millgate, and
Martin Seymour-Smith (see "Credits and Sources" page for bibliographic references).
One can often determine the importance a biographer attaches to a subject by examining
the book's index for the number of references to that subject or person; in this case,
"Sparks, Tryphena". We find that Millgate has six, Seymour-Smith fifteen, and Gittings
forty-two. Clearly, Gittings attaches importance to Tryphena and devotes much space
to her, including a seven page appendix refuting the allegation that she bore a child
fathered by Hardy (the 1966 book Providence and Mr. Hardy, by Lois Deacon).
Gittings is, however, prone to find traces of Tryphena in a number of Hardy's works.

Millgate's relatively few paragraphs concerning the "romance" conclude that, however
serious it may have been in its prime, it ended perhaps with "... an eventual relapse into
the friendly and cousinly terms of the past". Seymour-Smith straightforwardly states that
"I take the view of Millgate rather than that of Gittings: that Tryphena's passage through
Tom's life was fairly, if not absolutely, unimportant". Now then, what do you think?

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