‘In laughter there are more dreadful phases than in tears’ –Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd

The only signs of the terrible sorrow Boldwood had been combating through the night, and was combating now, were the want of colour in his well-defined face, the enlarged appearance of the veins in his forehead and temples, and the sharper lines about his mouth. The horse bore him away, and the very step of the animal seemed significant of dogged despair. Gabriel [Oak], for a minute, rose above his own grief in noticing Boldwood’s. He saw the square figure sitting erect upon the horse, the head turned to neither side, the elbows steady by the hips, the brim of the hat level and undisturbed in its onward glide, until the keen edges of Boldwood’s shape sank by degrees over the hill. To one who knew the man and his story there was something more striking in this immobility than in a collapse. The clash of discord between mood and matter here was forced painfully home to the heart; and, as in laughter there are more dreadful phases than in tears, so was there in the steadiness of this agonized man an expression deeper than a cry.

 —Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd, Chapter XXXV
 
There are a million ways to describe grief, yet this particular one comes out as newly fresh. Part of the excitement of reading, that keeps me posting more quotes and comments about the books I’m reading, is the ability to stop on a paragraph and point out just how great a gift the classics give to us by continually reconfiguring those hoary old emotions—love, fear, anger, grief—into new forms for us readers’ enrichment.
 
Boldwood is crushed by the news of Bathsheba Everdene’s recent marriage to Troy. Gabriel Oak’s own feelings to the nuptials are rather sensitive as well, but he has been protecting his feelings by estranging himself and his heart from Bathsheba for most of the book.
 
Hardy shows us Boldwood’s brittle nature through paradox. We’ve seen this technique before; the author explains something in some detail, then with a grand gesture says, “Aha! this actually means the complete opposite.” Hardy does set it up for us here, as we have been privy to the details of Boldwood’s tragedy over the last couple chapters, as Boldwood sees Bathsheba’s love drifting out of his reach. It is we readers that he is addressing in “to one who knew the man and his story.…”
 
So really, the perspective that Boldwood’s fate brings to us disinterested readers, the perspective that Hardy has spent most of the novel creating, is that here is a man who is so committed to rectitude and keeping up appearances that it is only someone like us readers or our surrogate, Oak, who have followed the trace of Boldwood’s tragedy, who can actually discern that tragedy while he yet maintains his bearing.
 
The erosion of that bearing, however, will be the story of the remaining chapters.
 
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‘They presented alternations of roan and bay, in shapes like a Moorish arch’ -Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd

His [Boldwood’s] house stood recessed from the road, and the stables, which are to a farm what a fireplace is to a room, were behind, their lower portions being lost amid bushes of laurel. Inside the blue door, open half-way down, were to be seen at this time the backs and tails of half-a-dozen warm and contented horses standing in their stalls; and as thus viewed, they presented alternations of roan and bay, in shapes like a Moorish arch, the tail being a streak down the midst of each. Over these, and lost to the eye gazing in from the outer light, the mouths of the same animals could be heard busily sustaining the above-named warmth and plumpness by quantities of oats and hay. The restless and shadowy figure of a colt wandered about a loose-box at the end, whilst the steady grind of all the eaters was occasionally diversified by the rattle of a rope or the stamp of a foot.

—Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd, Chapter XVIII

I adore the earthiness of this particular quote, the crafty way that Hardy leavens his use of the English language’s more rarefied words of French or Latin origin with good-sized helpings of our Anglo-Saxon vocabulary. ‘Portions’ is followed by ‘lost amid bushes of laurel.’ ‘Presented alterations’ gives rise to ‘roan and bay,’ and then ‘Moorish arch’ leads to ‘the tail being a streak down the midst of each.’ ‘Quantities’ is balanced with ‘oats and hay.’

Then, at the end of the group, another twin hit of Latin words: ‘occasionally diversified,’ which Hardy then contrasts immediately with a doubled adverbial phrase, all in Anglo-Saxon: ‘the rattle of a rope or the stamp of a foot.’ It’s not perfect, and the author probably didn’t even realize it, but it makes a difference in the rhythm of the reading to keep switching back and forth between the more florid words and their punchy and direct counterparts.