Explanatory Note to the First Edition
The main portion of the following story appeared—with slight
modifications—in the Graphic newspaper; other chapters, more
especially addressed to adult readers, in the Fortnightly Review and the
National Observer, as episodic sketches. My thanks are tendered to the
editors and proprietors of those periodicals for enabling me now to piece the
trunk and limbs of the novel together, and print it complete, as originally
written two years ago.
I will just add that the story is sent out in all sincerity of purpose, as an
attempt to give artistic form to a true sequence of things; and in respect of
the book’s opinions and sentiments, I would ask any too genteel reader,
who cannot endure to have said what everybody nowadays thinks and feels, to
remember a well-worn sentence of St. Jerome’s: If an offense come out of
the truth, better it is that the offense come than that the truth be concealed.
T.H.
November 1891.
Author’s Preface to the Fifth and Later Editions
This novel being one wherein the great campaign of the heroine begins after an
event in her experience which has usually been treated as fatal to her part of
protagonist, or at least as the virtual ending of her enterprises and hopes, it
was quite contrary to avowed conventions that the public should welcome the
book and agree with me in holding that there was something more to be said in
fiction than had been said about the shaded side of a well-known catastrophe.
But the responsive spirit in which Tess of the d’Urbervilles has
been received by the readers of England and America would seem to prove that
the plan of laying down a story on the lines of tacit opinion, instead of
making it to square with the merely vocal formulae of society, is not
altogether a wrong one, even when exemplified in so unequal and partial an
achievement as the present. For this responsiveness I cannot refrain from
expressing my thanks; and my regret is that, in a world where one so often
hungers in vain for friendship, where even not to be wilfully misunderstood is
felt as a kindness, I shall never meet in person these appreciative readers,
male and female, and shake them by the hand.
I include amongst them the reviewers—by far the majority—who have
so generously welcomed the tale. Their words show that they, like the others,
have only too largely repaired my defects of narration by their own imaginative
intuition.
Nevertheless, though the novel was intended to be neither didactic nor
aggressive, but in the scenic parts to be representative simply and in the
contemplative to be oftener charged with impressions than with convictions,
there have been objectors both to the matter and to the rendering.
The more austere of these maintain a conscientious difference of opinion
concerning, among other things, subjects fit for art, and reveal an inability
to associate the idea of the sub-title adjective with any but the artificial
and derivative meaning which has resulted to it from the ordinances of
civilization. They ignore the meaning of the word in Nature, together with all
aesthetic claims upon it, not to mention the spiritual interpretation afforded
by the finest side of their own Christianity. Others dissent on grounds which
are intrinsically no more than an assertion that the novel embodies the views
of life prevalent at the end of the nineteenth century, and not those of an
earlier and simpler generation—an assertion which I can only hope may be
well founded. Let me repeat that a novel is an impression, not an argument; and
there the matter must rest; as one is reminded by a passage which occurs in the
letters of Schiller to Goethe on judges of this class: “They are those
who seek only their own ideas in a representation, and prize that which should
be as higher than what is. The cause of the dispute, therefore, lies in the
very first principles, and it would be utterly impossible to come to an
understanding with them.” And again: “As soon as I observe that any
one, when judging of poetical representations, considers anything more
important than the inner Necessity and Truth, I have done with him.”
In the introductory words to the first edition I suggested the possible advent
of the genteel person who would not be able to endure something or other in
these pages. That person duly appeared among the aforesaid objectors. In one
case he felt upset that it was not possible for him to read the book through
three times, owing to my not having made that critical effort which
“alone can prove the salvation of such an one.” In another, he
objected to such vulgar articles as the Devil’s pitchfork, a
lodging-house carving-knife, and a shame-bought parasol, appearing in a
respectable story. In another place he was a gentleman who turned Christian for
half-an-hour the better to express his grief that a disrespectful phrase about
the Immortals should have been used; though the same innate gentility compelled
him to excuse the author in words of pity that one cannot be too thankful for:
“He does but give us of his best.” I can assure this great critic
that to exclaim illogically against the gods, singular or plural, is not such
an original sin of mine as he seems to imagine. True, it may have some local
originality; though if Shakespeare were an authority on history, which perhaps
he is not, I could show that the sin was introduced into Wessex as early as the
Heptarchy itself. Says Glo’ster in Lear, otherwise Ina, king of
that country:
As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;They kill us for their sport.
The remaining two or three manipulators of Tess were of the predetermined sort
whom most writers and readers would gladly forget; professed literary boxers,
who put on their convictions for the occasion; modern “Hammers of
Heretics”; sworn Discouragers, ever on the watch to prevent the tentative
half-success from becoming the whole success later on; who pervert plain
meanings, and grow personal under the name of practising the great historical
method. However, they may have causes to advance, privileges to guard,
traditions to keep going; some of which a mere tale-teller, who writes down how
the things of the world strike him, without any ulterior intentions whatever,
has overlooked, and may by pure inadvertence have run foul of when in the least
aggressive mood. Perhaps some passing perception, the outcome of a dream hour,
would, if generally acted on, cause such an assailant considerable
inconvenience with respect to position, interests, family, servant, ox, ass,
neighbour, or neighbour’s wife. He therefore valiantly hides his
personality behind a publisher’s shutters, and cries “Shame!”
So densely is the world with any shifting of positions, even the best warranted
advance, galls somebody’s kibe. Such shiftings often begin in sentiment,
and such sentiment sometimes begins in a novel.
July 1892.
The foregoing remarks were written during the early career of this story, when
a spirited public and private criticism of its points was still fresh to the
feelings. The pages are allowed to stand for what they are worth, as something
once said; but probably they would not have been written now. Even in the first
short time which has elapsed since the book was first published, some of the
critics who have provoked the reply have “gone down into silence,”
as if to remind one of the infinite unimportance of both their say and
mine.
January 1895.
The present edition of this novel contains a few pages that have never appeared
in any previous edition. When the detached episodes were collected as stated in
the preface of 1891, these pages were overlooked, though they were in the
original manuscript. They occur in Chapter X.
Respecting the sub-title, to which allusion was made above, I may add that it
was appended at the last moment, after reading the final proofs, as being the
estimate left in a candid mind of the heroine’s character—an estimate that
nobody would be likely to dispute. It was disputed more than anything else in
the book. Melius fuerat non scibere. But there it stands.
The novel was first published complete, in three volumes, in November, 1891.
T.H.
March 1912.
