finished_summaries/gradesaver/Tess of the D'Urbervilles/section_3_part_2.txt
Tess of the D'Urbervilles.chapter 26
chapter 26
{"name": "Chapter 26", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210410060617/https://www.gradesaver.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/study-guide/summary-phase-4-chapters-25-34", "summary": "Angel discusses with his father his plans for attaining a position as a farmer in England or one of the Colonies. Reverend Clare feels that it is his duty to set up a sum of money for Angel, for he did not pay for him to go to university. When Angel mentions marriage, Reverend Clare suggests Mercy Chant, but Angel says that it would be more practical to have a woman who can work as a farmer. Angel mentions that he has found a possible wife, and Mrs. Clare asks if she is from a respectable family. Mrs. Clare insists on Mercy Chant, claiming that she has accomplishments. Angel claims that Tess is full of actualized poetry, and an unimpeachable Christian. Reverend Clare tells Angel a story about a young man with the last name d'Urberville, known for his rakish behavior. Reverend Clare had confronted him when he was preaching at another church, and the two nearly got into a brawl. Angel finds that he cannot accept his parents' narrow dogma, but he reveres his father's practice and recognizes the heroism under the piety.", "analysis": "In this chapter, Hardy continues to develop the established character traits of the Clare family. The discussion between Angel and his parents concerning Tess illustrates how little knowledge Angel actually has concerning Tess Durbeyfield. Angel speaks of Tess in abstract and idealistic terms, claiming that she is full of \"actualized poetry\" but unable to produce any direct evidence of her morality or accomplishments. Angel's exalted claims of Tess are ironic, for he praises Tess for an unblemished morality that contrasts starkly with her actual experience. Hardy includes an additional irony concerning the reappearance of Alec d'Urberville. This mention is not haphazard, but rather serves as a reminder of Alec's presence in the novel and foreshadowing his later return to prominence. This also illustrates the theme of fate that pervades Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Just as Angel met Tess by chance only to return to her life, the chance encounter between Reverend Clare and Alec d'Urberville suggests that Alec's role in the lives of Tess Durbeyfield and Angel Clare is not yet finished"}


It was not till the evening, after family prayers, that Angel found
opportunity of broaching to his father one or two subjects near his
heart.  He had strung himself up to the purpose while kneeling behind
his brothers on the carpet, studying the little nails in the heels of
their walking boots.  When the service was over they went out of the
room with their mother, and Mr Clare and himself were left alone.

The young man first discussed with the elder his plans for the
attainment of his position as a farmer on an extensive scale--either
in England or in the Colonies.  His father then told him that, as he
had not been put to the expense of sending Angel up to Cambridge, he
had felt it his duty to set by a sum of money every year towards the
purchase or lease of land for him some day, that he might not feel
himself unduly slighted.

"As far as worldly wealth goes," continued his father, "you will no
doubt stand far superior to your brothers in a few years."

This considerateness on old Mr Clare's part led Angel onward to the
other and dearer subject.  He observed to his father that he was
then six-and-twenty, and that when he should start in the farming
business he would require eyes in the back of his head to see to all
matters--some one would be necessary to superintend the domestic
labours of his establishment whilst he was afield.  Would it not be
well, therefore, for him to marry?

His father seemed to think this idea not unreasonable; and then Angel
put the question--

"What kind of wife do you think would be best for me as a thrifty
hard-working farmer?"

"A truly Christian woman, who will be a help and a comfort to you in
your goings-out and your comings-in.  Beyond that, it really matters
little.  Such an one can be found; indeed, my earnest-minded friend
and neighbour, Dr Chant--"

"But ought she not primarily to be able to milk cows, churn good
butter, make immense cheeses; know how to sit hens and turkeys and
rear chickens, to direct a field of labourers in an emergency, and
estimate the value of sheep and calves?"

"Yes; a farmer's wife; yes, certainly.  It would be desirable."  Mr
Clare, the elder, had plainly never thought of these points before.
"I was going to add," he said, "that for a pure and saintly woman you
will not find one more to your true advantage, and certainly not more
to your mother's mind and my own, than your friend Mercy, whom you
used to show a certain interest in.  It is true that my neighbour
Chant's daughter had lately caught up the fashion of the younger
clergy round about us for decorating the Communion-table--altar, as I
was shocked to hear her call it one day--with flowers and other stuff
on festival occasions.  But her father, who is quite as opposed to
such flummery as I, says that can be cured.  It is a mere girlish
outbreak which, I am sure, will not be permanent."

"Yes, yes; Mercy is good and devout, I know.  But, father, don't you
think that a young woman equally pure and virtuous as Miss Chant,
but one who, in place of that lady's ecclesiastical accomplishments,
understands the duties of farm life as well as a farmer himself,
would suit me infinitely better?"

His father persisted in his conviction that a knowledge of a farmer's
wife's duties came second to a Pauline view of humanity; and the
impulsive Angel, wishing to honour his father's feelings and to
advance the cause of his heart at the same time, grew specious.
He said that fate or Providence had thrown in his way a woman who
possessed every qualification to be the helpmate of an agriculturist,
and was decidedly of a serious turn of mind.  He would not say
whether or not she had attached herself to the sound Low Church
School of his father; but she would probably be open to conviction
on that point; she was a regular church-goer of simple faith;
honest-hearted, receptive, intelligent, graceful to a degree, chaste
as a vestal, and, in personal appearance, exceptionally beautiful.

"Is she of a family such as you would care to marry into--a lady, in
short?" asked his startled mother, who had come softly into the study
during the conversation.

"She is not what in common parlance is called a lady," said Angel,
unflinchingly, "for she is a cottager's daughter, as I am proud to
say.  But she IS a lady, nevertheless--in feeling and nature."

"Mercy Chant is of a very good family."

"Pooh!--what's the advantage of that, mother?" said Angel quickly.
"How is family to avail the wife of a man who has to rough it as I
have, and shall have to do?"

"Mercy is accomplished.  And accomplishments have their charm,"
returned his mother, looking at him through her silver spectacles.

"As to external accomplishments, what will be the use of them in the
life I am going to lead?--while as to her reading, I can take that
in hand.  She'll be apt pupil enough, as you would say if you knew
her. She's brim full of poetry--actualized poetry, if I may use the
expression.  She LIVES what paper-poets only write...  And she is an
unimpeachable Christian, I am sure; perhaps of the very tribe, genus,
and species you desire to propagate."

"O Angel, you are mocking!"

"Mother, I beg pardon.  But as she really does attend Church almost
every Sunday morning, and is a good Christian girl, I am sure you
will tolerate any social shortcomings for the sake of that quality,
and feel that I may do worse than choose her."  Angel waxed quite
earnest on that rather automatic orthodoxy in his beloved Tess which
(never dreaming that it might stand him in such good stead) he had
been prone to slight when observing it practised by her and the other
milkmaids, because of its obvious unreality amid beliefs essentially
naturalistic.

In their sad doubts as to whether their son had himself any right
whatever to the title he claimed for the unknown young woman, Mr and
Mrs Clare began to feel it as an advantage not to be overlooked that
she at least was sound in her views; especially as the conjunction of
the pair must have arisen by an act of Providence; for Angel never
would have made orthodoxy a condition of his choice.  They said
finally that it was better not to act in a hurry, but that they would
not object to see her.

Angel therefore refrained from declaring more particulars now.
He felt that, single-minded and self-sacrificing as his parents
were, there yet existed certain latent prejudices of theirs, as
middle-class people, which it would require some tact to overcome.
For though legally at liberty to do as he chose, and though their
daughter-in-law's qualifications could make no practical difference
to their lives, in the probability of her living far away from them,
he wished for affection's sake not to wound their sentiment in the
most important decision of his life.

He observed his own inconsistencies in dwelling upon accidents in
Tess's life as if they were vital features.  It was for herself that
he loved Tess; her soul, her heart, her substance--not for her skill
in the dairy, her aptness as his scholar, and certainly not for
her simple formal faith-professions.  Her unsophisticated open-air
existence required no varnish of conventionality to make it palatable
to him.  He held that education had as yet but little affected the
beats of emotion and impulse on which domestic happiness depends.  It
was probable that, in the lapse of ages, improved systems of moral
and intellectual training would appreciably, perhaps considerably,
elevate the involuntary and even the unconscious instincts of human
nature; but up to the present day, culture, as far as he could see,
might be said to have affected only the mental epiderm of those
lives which had been brought under its influence.  This belief was
confirmed by his experience of women, which, having latterly been
extended from the cultivated middle-class into the rural community,
had taught him how much less was the intrinsic difference between the
good and wise woman of one social stratum and the good and wise woman
of another social stratum, than between the good and bad, the wise
and the foolish, of the same stratum or class.

It was the morning of his departure.  His brothers had already left
the Vicarage to proceed on a walking tour in the north, whence one
was to return to his college, and the other to his curacy.  Angel
might have accompanied them, but preferred to rejoin his sweetheart
at Talbothays.  He would have been an awkward member of the
party; for, though the most appreciative humanist, the most ideal
religionist, even the best-versed Christologist of the three, there
was alienation in the standing consciousness that his squareness
would not fit the round hole that had been prepared for him.  To
neither Felix nor Cuthbert had he ventured to mention Tess.

His mother made him sandwiches, and his father accompanied him,
on his own mare, a little way along the road.  Having fairly well
advanced his own affairs, Angel listened in a willing silence, as
they jogged on together through the shady lanes, to his father's
account of his parish difficulties, and the coldness of brother
clergymen whom he loved, because of his strict interpretations of
the New Testament by the light of what they deemed a pernicious
Calvinistic doctrine.

"Pernicious!" said Mr Clare, with genial scorn; and he proceeded to
recount experiences which would show the absurdity of that idea.
He told of wondrous conversions of evil livers of which he had been
the instrument, not only amongst the poor, but amongst the rich and
well-to-do; and he also candidly admitted many failures.

As an instance of the latter, he mentioned the case of a young
upstart squire named d'Urberville, living some forty miles off, in
the neighbourhood of Trantridge.

"Not one of the ancient d'Urbervilles of Kingsbere and other places?"
asked his son.  "That curiously historic worn-out family with its
ghostly legend of the coach-and-four?"

"O no.  The original d'Urbervilles decayed and disappeared sixty
or eighty years ago--at least, I believe so.  This seems to be a
new family which had taken the name; for the credit of the former
knightly line I hope they are spurious, I'm sure.  But it is odd
to hear you express interest in old families.  I thought you set less
store by them even than I."

"You misapprehend me, father; you often do," said Angel with a
little impatience.  "Politically I am sceptical as to the virtue of
their being old.  Some of the wise even among themselves 'exclaim
against their own succession,' as Hamlet puts it; but lyrically,
dramatically, and even historically, I am tenderly attached to them."

This distinction, though by no means a subtle one, was yet too
subtle for Mr Clare the elder, and he went on with the story he had
been about to relate; which was that after the death of the senior
so-called d'Urberville, the young man developed the most culpable
passions, though he had a blind mother, whose condition should have
made him know better.  A knowledge of his career having come to
the ears of Mr Clare, when he was in that part of the country
preaching missionary sermons, he boldly took occasion to speak to
the delinquent on his spiritual state.  Though he was a stranger,
occupying another's pulpit, he had felt this to be his duty, and
took for his text the words from St Luke: "Thou fool, this night thy
soul shall be required of thee!"  The young man much resented this
directness of attack, and in the war of words which followed when
they met he did not scruple publicly to insult Mr Clare, without
respect for his gray hairs.

Angel flushed with distress.

"Dear father," he said sadly, "I wish you would not expose yourself
to such gratuitous pain from scoundrels!"

"Pain?" said his father, his rugged face shining in the ardour of
self-abnegation.  "The only pain to me was pain on his account, poor,
foolish young man.  Do you suppose his incensed words could give
me any pain, or even his blows?  'Being reviled we bless; being
persecuted we suffer it; being defamed we entreat; we are made as the
filth of the world, and as the offscouring of all things unto this
day.'  Those ancient and noble words to the Corinthians are strictly
true at this present hour."

"Not blows, father?  He did not proceed to blows?"

"No, he did not.  Though I have borne blows from men in a mad state
of intoxication."

"No!"

"A dozen times, my boy.  What then?  I have saved them from the guilt
of murdering their own flesh and blood thereby; and they have lived
to thank me, and praise God."

"May this young man do the same!" said Angel fervently.  "But I fear
otherwise, from what you say."

"We'll hope, nevertheless," said Mr Clare.  "And I continue to pray
for him, though on this side of the grave we shall probably never
meet again.  But, after all, one of those poor words of mine may
spring up in his heart as a good seed some day."

Now, as always, Clare's father was sanguine as a child; and though
the younger could not accept his parent's narrow dogma, he revered
his practice and recognized the hero under the pietist.  Perhaps he
revered his father's practice even more now than ever, seeing that,
in the question of making Tessy his wife, his father had not once
thought of inquiring whether she were well provided or penniless.
The same unworldliness was what had necessitated Angel's getting
a living as a farmer, and would probably keep his brothers in the
position of poor parsons for the term of their activities; yet Angel
admired it none the less.  Indeed, despite his own heterodoxy, Angel
often felt that he was nearer to his father on the human side than
was either of his brethren.



Chapter 26
Angel discusses with his father his plans for attaining a position as a farmer in England or one of the Colonies. Reverend Clare feels that it is his duty to set up a sum of money for Angel, for he did not pay for him to go to university. When Angel mentions marriage, Reverend Clare suggests Mercy Chant, but Angel says that it would be more practical to have a woman who can work as a farmer. Angel mentions that he has found a possible wife, and Mrs. Clare asks if she is from a respectable family. Mrs. Clare insists on Mercy Chant, claiming that she has accomplishments. Angel claims that Tess is full of actualized poetry, and an unimpeachable Christian. Reverend Clare tells Angel a story about a young man with the last name d'Urberville, known for his rakish behavior. Reverend Clare had confronted him when he was preaching at another church, and the two nearly got into a brawl. Angel finds that he cannot accept his parents' narrow dogma, but he reveres his father's practice and recognizes the heroism under the piety.
In this chapter, Hardy continues to develop the established character traits of the Clare family. The discussion between Angel and his parents concerning Tess illustrates how little knowledge Angel actually has concerning Tess Durbeyfield. Angel speaks of Tess in abstract and idealistic terms, claiming that she is full of "actualized poetry" but unable to produce any direct evidence of her morality or accomplishments. Angel's exalted claims of Tess are ironic, for he praises Tess for an unblemished morality that contrasts starkly with her actual experience. Hardy includes an additional irony concerning the reappearance of Alec d'Urberville. This mention is not haphazard, but rather serves as a reminder of Alec's presence in the novel and foreshadowing his later return to prominence. This also illustrates the theme of fate that pervades Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Just as Angel met Tess by chance only to return to her life, the chance encounter between Reverend Clare and Alec d'Urberville suggests that Alec's role in the lives of Tess Durbeyfield and Angel Clare is not yet finished