FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD

Thomas Hardy

Jan 1975 · YouHui Culture Publishing Company

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CHAPTER ONE

Description of Farmer Oak - An Incident

When Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till they were within an

unimportant distance of his ears, his eyes were reduced to chinks, and diverging

wrinkles appeared round them, extending upon his countenance like the rays in a

rudimentary sketch of the rising sun.

His Christian name was Gabriel, and on working days he was a young man of sound

judgement, easy motions, proper dress, and general good character. On Sundays he

was a man of misty views, rather given to postponing, and hampered by his best

clothes and umbrella: upon the whole, one who felt himself to occupy morally that

vast middle space of Laodicean neutrality which lay between the Communion people

of the parish and the drunken section, - that is, he went to church, but yawned

privately by the time the congregation reached the Nicene creed, and thought of what

there would be for dinner when he meant to be listening to the sermon. Or, to state his

character as it stood in the scale of public opinion, when his friends and critics were in

tantrums, he was considered rather a bad man; when they were pleased, he was rather

a good man; when they were neither, he was a man whose moral colour was a kind of

pepper-and-salt mixture.

Since he lived six times as many working days as Sundays, Oak's appearance in his

old clothes was most peculiarly his own - the mental picture formed by his neighbours

in imagining him being always dressed in that way. He wore a low-crowned felt hat,

spread out at the base by tight jamming upon the head for security in high winds, and

a coat like Dr Johnson's; his lower extremities being encased in ordinary leather

leggings and boots emphatically large, affording to each foot a roomy apartment so

constructed that any wearer might stand in a river all day long and know nothing of

damp - their maker being a conscientious man who endeavoured to compensate for

any weakness in his cut by unstinted dimension and solidity.

Mr Oak carried about him, by way of watch, what may be called a small silver clock;

in other words, it was a watch as to shape and intention, and a small clock as to sic.

This instrument being several years older than Oak's grandfather, had the peculiarity

of going either too fast or not at all. The smaller of its hands, too, occasionally slipped

round on the pivot, and thus, though the minutes were told with precision, nobody

could be quite certain of the hour they belonged to. The stopping peculiarity of his

watch Oak remedied by thumps and shakes, and he escaped any evil consequences

from the other two defects by constant comparisons with and observations of the sun

and stars, and by pressing his face close to the glass of his neighbours' windows, till

he could discern the hour marked by the green-faced time-keepers within. It may be

mentioned that Oak's fob being difficult of access, by reason of its somewhat high

situation in the waistband of his trousers (which also lay at a remote height under his

waistcoat), the watch was as a necessity pulled out by throwing the body to one side,

compressing the mouth and face to a mere mass of ruddy flesh on account of the

exertion, and drawing up the watch by its chain, like a bucket from a well.

But some thoughtful persons, who had seen him walking across one of his fieldn a

certain December morning - sunny and exceedingly mild - might have regarded

Gabriel Oak in other aspects than these. In his ace one might notice that many of the

hues and curves of youth had tarried on to manhood: there even remained in his

remoter crannies some relics of the boy. His height and breadth would have been

sufficient to make his presence imposing, had they been exhibited with due

consideration. But there is a way some men have, rural and urban alike, for which the

mind is more responsible than flesh and sinew: it is a way of cling their dimensions by

their manner of showing them. And from a quiet modesty that would have become a

vestal, which seemed continually to impress upon him that he had no great claim on

the world's room, Oak walked unassumingly, and with a faintly perceptible bend, yet

distinct from a bowing of the shoulders. This may be said to be a defect in an

individual if he depends for his valuation more upon his appearance than upon his

capacity to wear well, which Oak did not.

He had just reached the time of life at which `young' is ceasing to be the prefix of

`man' in speaking of one. He was at the brightest period of masculine growth, for his

intellect and his emotions `were clearly separated: he had passed the time during

which the influence of youth indiscriminately mingles them in the character of

impulse, and he had not yet arrived at the stage wherein they become united again, in

the character of prejudice, by the influence of a wife and family in short, he was

twenty-eight, and a bachelor.

The field he was in this morning sloped to a ridge called Norcombe Hill. Through a

spur of this hill ran the highway between Emminster and Chalk-Newton. Casually

glancing over the hedge, Oak saw coming down the incline before him an ornamental

spring waggon; painted yellow `and gaily marked, drawn by two horses, a waggoner

walking alongside bearing a whip perpendicularly. The waggon was laden with

household goods and window plants, and on the apex of the whole sat a woman,

young and attractive. Gabriel had not beheld the sight for more than half a minute,

when the vehicle was brought to a standstill just beneath his eyes.

`The tailboard of the waggon is gone, Miss,' said the waggoner.

`Then I heard it fall,' said the girl, in a soft, though not particularly low voice. `I heard a noise I could not account for when we were coming up the hill.'