The cat that ate Thomas Hardy’s heart

I SHALL break all the rules of narrative and give you the punch line first. The heart of Thomas Hardy was eaten by a cat. No, on second thoughts, I shall spell it out for you, for such a solemn subject begs precision. On the afternoon of Monday 16th January 1928 a casket was buried at St Michael’s Stinsford, near Dorchester, which contained the body of a cat, with the remains of Thomas Hardy’s heart inside it.

You don’t believe a word of it? Nor did I when I first heard the strange tale from Betty Allsop during Sunday lunch in Kensington twenty-odd years ago. Betty’s husband, Kenneth Allsop, the writer and broadcaster who died at their home in West Milton some months previously, and the story of Hardy’s heart had been one of his last obsessions, though sadly not one strong enough to override the physical pain which led him eventually to suicide.

The basic yarn as gleaned from Ken by Betty, was as follows. On Hardy’s death, it was decided that his ashes should lie in Poet’s Corner at Westminster Abbey. His heart. however, would be buried at Stinsford, the Mellstock of his writings, so that, as the local Mayor was to put it “We shall have the best part of Mr Hardy still with us in Dorchester.”

The heart was duly removed, wrapped in a tea-towel and placed in a biscuit tin which was lodged in a meat-safe at Max Gate, Hardy’s home, to await the attention of the undertaker. Unfortunately, when the undertaker arrived he found an open biscuit tin, a slightly soiled and tattered tea-towel and a cat that showed visible signs of having recently taken the best part of Mr Hardy unto himself.

According to Ken’s informant, as relayed to me by Betty, the undertaker’s reaction was commendably swift. He grabbed the cat, wrung its neck, wrapped it and the few grisly remains in the tea-towel and put the bundle into the biscuit tin and firmly closed the lid. “Mr ‘Ardy”, he said, probably panting slightly from his exertions, “wanted ‘is ‘eart buried at Stinsford, and buried at Stinsford Mr ‘Ardy’s ‘eart shall be.” And so it was, layered like those little Russian dolls successively in cat, biscuit tin and polished elm.

I laughed at the preposterous yarn. Let’s put together a book, I suggested, of heart stories: of the lost heart of Montrose; of Charles II’s heart, chucked in a Whitehall gutter with the rest of his innards by his embalmers; of the shrunken, date-like heart of France’s Sun King eaten as a joke by a Victorian Oxford don . . . of Thomas Hardy’s heart.

Come Monday’s hangover, I’d almost forgotten about it. Then in 1977, the subject came up once more. I had been engaged to research a film on English ghosts for an American television company and the producer had decided to shoot it in Wessex, partly because of the unrivalled scenery, partly because of the plethora of ghostly traditions in the area.

I stayed for the duration with Amanda Allsop, Ken’s daughter, and her partner, the late Giles Wordsworth, at their house on Custom House Quay, Weymouth. Giles, a gentle and courteous man, bore a striking resemblance to his great great great grand uncle, the poet William, and was steeped in the literary tradition of Wessex; he was a self-effacing expert not only on his forebears William and Dorothy and their friend Coleridge, but also on William Barnes, Hardy and the various Powyses.

While not entirely convinced, he relished the paradox of the Hardy’s heart story. Cats, he pointed out with a twinkle from behind his spectacles, had at one period been the bane of Hardy’s life. In the bitter years leading up to her death in 1916, Hardy’s first wife Emma had bred cats by the dozen in and around Max Gate, possibly as child-substitute reproaches to her husband and her own barren state.

The presence of the prowling cats had engendered unease in the small, solitary bird-like poet. And, Giles added, after Emma’s death a couple, at least of the cats had remained as rodent catchers on the Max Gate premises, even during the reign of Thomas’s beloved terrier, Wessex.

One day, Amanda, Giles and I sallied forth to borrow a coffin. Nothing personal, just one of the props for the film. It proved surprisingly easy to secure the loan, so long as we promised to bring the thing back in good condition. The Weymouth undertaker even threw in an ancient graveyard lantern, of the type that body-snatchers might have used. During our negotiations over the long pine box, Hardy’s heart was aired, as it were, once more. The undertaker remembered not only Hardy, live and walking the streets of Dorchester, but also Charles Hannah, the funeral director who masterminded Hardy’s rather complicated obsequies.

“It ill behoves a man in my position,” he said, puffing on a black Burmah cheroot, “to say whether the story is true or no. But I’ll tell you this for nothing. That’s exactly how old Charlie Hannah would have handled the situation.”

What? we asked. Heart gone, cat, neck, wrung, box, no questions asked?

His reply was a slow nod and a wink through the waft of aromatic tobacco.

In 1986 I moved permanently to Dorset and the subject of what I had come to think of as ‘Ardy’s ‘Eart popped up at dinner parties and in pubs. I, for the most part, did the popping and was struck by two points; the relatively few people among many Dorset-born, hugely literate Hardy buffs, who had heard of the story, and the vehement belligerence of those who had, but felt it an affront to Hardy’s memory.

“Categorical nonsense” . . . “absolute rubbish” and among the lower echelons which form my normal circle of acquaintance, “load of old cobblers” were the principal responses. Had I fallen half in love with an example of early 20th century conspiracy theory, I began to wonder? Was the whole thing a kind of modern rural myth? Or could there, just conceivably, be some truth in the legend?

The only way, I concluded, to put a proper perspective on the matter was to assemble the undisputed facts surrounding Hardy’s death and burial and look at these in detail. This, with the invaluable research assistance of Sara Hudston, I have been able to do and here are the results.

Just after Christmas, 1927, Thomas Hardy fell ill with one of those chesty agues that wrack old men in winter. He took to his bed, and his second wife, Florence, sent for her sister Eva to help nurse him. That New Year marked Hardy’s passing into his own eighty-eighth and his international status ensured that his illness was noted on the front pages of newspapers throughout the English-speaking world. By the first week of January, he was reported to be getting better.

On Wednesday 11 January as the chill afternoon decayed into twilight, Hardy asked Florence to come to his bedroom and read to him a chosen favourite verse from the work of Omar Khayyam:

Oh Thou, who Man of baser Earth did make

and ev’n with Paradise devised the Snake;

For all the Sins wherewith the Face of Man

is blacken’d – Man’s forgiveness

give and take!

Eva brought him a bite to eat and a glass of cider, then stoked his bedroom fire and left him to lie peacefully in the rosy glow that it shed. Shortly after eight o’clock, she heard him cry out very clearly and firmly: “Eva! Eva! What is this?” When she reached his side, she found him still and cold and pulseless. His doctor certified Thomas Hardy dead at nine o’clock that night.

It wasn’t, of course, unexpected. Charles Hannah, of the Dorchester firm Hannah and Holland, the funeral director who had buried Hardy’s mother and father, was notified and telegrams were sent to London, though an official press statement was not issued until midday on Thursday 12 January; the Dorset Daily Echo and Weymouth Despatch ran a late extra edition with the news. By that time Mr Sydney Cotterell, who, with Florence Hardy was joint executor of the will, was in London with Sir James Barrie, masterminding the Westminster Abbey ceremony. Hardy had anticipated this turn of events: “I wish to be buried in Stinsford churchyard,” he said in the will, “unless the Nation strongly desires otherwise.” The nation, or at least its literary leaders, had so desired, and the plan was that Hardy’s body would be cremated at Woking on Saturday – the crematorium being the nearest to Dorchester in those days – prior to the burial of the ashes at Westminster on Monday, 16 January.

But Florence Hardy was nagged by doubts. When the Revered Hubert Cowley, vicar of Stinsford, came with his wife to pay their respects on the evening of the ominously dated Friday 13 January, she expressed them: Thomas had been attached all his life to Stinsford church, making it more famous even than the Bronte church at Howarth. Surely it was in St Michael’s that his heart metaphorically lay?

Mr Cowley agreed. Indeed he had brought with him a letter to show Mrs Hardy. Four years previously, when he took up his incumbency, Cowley had asked the great man if, despite his apparent atheism, he could count him a parishioner.

Hardy’s reply had been succinct.

12 December 1924

Dear Mr Cowley: Yes, regard me as parishioner. Certainly I hope to be still more one when I am in a supine position some day. Sincerely yours, Thomas Hardy.

It was at this point that Mrs Cowley said: “Cannot we have Mr Hardy’s heart buried at Stinsford?”

The relief to Florence Hardy and Hubert Cowley was immediate It was the obvious answer. Messengers were sent one more to Charles Hannah and another to Hardy’s physician, Dr E.W.Mann. The latter arrived the same evening with his partner, Dr F. L. Nash-Wortham to perform the necessary operation on Hardy’s body as it lay in his bedroom.

I asked Emeritus Professor Alan Usher, one of the world’s leading forensic pathologists about the procedure. It would be a very simple one, with little or no mess, he said. The Victorians often carried out whole post mortems in the deceased’s bedroom. The process of hypostasis – the draining of the blood to the lowest point of the body – begins as soon as circulation ceases, so that the upper surfaces are virtually bloodless.

“Once the flesh of the chest is peeled back, the sternum or breast bone is sprung with a couple of strokes of a bone-saw, revealing the heart which lies directly beneath. The great vessels are severed, the heart lifted while the posterior attachments are cut and the organ can then be removed from the body.”

Professor Usher estimated that a skilled surgeon could carry out the operation in under two minutes. “Country doctors ought not to take more than five to ten at the outside.”

On Florence Hardy’s own testimony the heart was then wrapped in a tea-towel, placed in the biscuit tin and left beside the body in Hardy’s bedroom overnight – not in a meat-safe in the kitchen, as Kenneth Allsop’s informant had averred. Assistants from the undertakers stitched up the body and draped it in Hardy’s scarlet gown, received with his honorary degree of Doctor of Literature, University of Cambridge, before placing it in a simple wooden coffin.

The following morning was marked by a glorious sunrise resembling, said one newspaper report, “that of the closing scene in the immortal Tess story.” The hearse arrived at 7.55 am and Charles Hannah entered the house alone, leaving behind the driver and four bearers. Outside a crowd of locals, pressmen, photographers, and a cinema newsreel crew waited . . . and waited.

Charles Hannah emerged again, a good ten minutes later. He said not a word, but after strewing some narcissi from the Max Gate garden inside the hearse, he beckoned abruptly to the bearers, and they followed him back inside the house. They emerged at 8.08 am exactly, carrying the mortal remains of the great poet. The coffin was placed in the hearse. Slowly the hearse moved off, at a walking pace, Charles Hannah striding along by its side, the bearers keeping pace behind. And then an odd incident occurred.

“About 200 yards from the residence,” said a report in the Dorset Daily Echo, “Mr Hannah suddenly jumped into a seat beside the driver and the hearse accelerated rapidly away before the astonished bearers, who had not known of this arrangement, realised what was happening . . .”

Well, what had happened? Had something so unusual occurred during that exceptionally long ten minutes in the bedroom at Max Gate that it had perturbed the normally imperturbable Charles Hannah? Obviously something had rattled him out of his impeccably planned routine. And the hearse incident was not the only incident in Thomas Hardy’s final ceremonies. Something even odder was to happen on Monday.

According to newspaper reports published on Saturday, two identical small bronze urns had been prepared, each bearing the simple inscription “Thomas Hardy O.M.” and his dates. In one would be placed the ashes of the body, after the cremation at Woking at 1.30 pm on the Saturday: while the other would be reserved for the heart.

At 1.20 pm on Monday 16 January, the latter urn would be carried from Max Gate the short distance to St Michael’s, Stinsford, when the Reverend Hubert Cowley would conduct an ordinary funeral service for villagers, relatives and close friends only.

Hardy’s favourite hymns would be sung while the simple urn would stand before the altar steps. And then, to the strains of the Gregorian chant Nunc Dimitis, the urn would be carried by Mr Cowley for internment in the grave of Emma, Hardy’s first wife. And in the event, that is what happened – though with one significant difference in detail.

Instead of the urn, a large, polished wooden box, about the size and shape of a biscuit tin, stood before the altar and it was this that was subsequently carried for solemn interment by Mr Cowley.

Why the change of plan? No explanation was ever offered but it is certain the box was overlarge to accommodate such a small urn . .

So how likely, on balance, is the ‘Ardy’s ‘Eart story? Very likely, according to Professor Usher. “From a medical point of view, I can see no flaw in it,” he says. “The heart of a man of |Hardy’s age and small stature would be about the size of a large eating or cider apple. Although he was active almost until his last illness, I would expect his heart to show miocardial scarring – a stringiness of the tissue which comes with age as well as disease. But there would be plenty of edible muscle to tempt a cat: with the animal’s usual fastidiousness it would probably nibble this out and leaves the tubes and valves and so on. Unlike dogs and rats, cats do not normally go in for eating human flesh in cases where, for instance, a body has lain undiscovered for some time. But offal is different. Any cat worth its salt would have sniffed it out, pawed open the biscuit tin and indulged itself in a midnight feast.”

Assuming the cat scenario to be true, who would initially know about it? Florence and Eva and Charles Hannah, of course: and Mr Cowley would surely have been owed an explanation of the small urn suddenly turning into a hefty box.

And whom would they tell? As few people as possible, is the probable answer; given the near-royal nature of the Hardy departure, such an untoward incident would take on an almost sacrilegious aura. But the immediate family, blood relatives of Thomas, with an eye for the grotesque, might have been quietly amused.

Dorset County Councillor John Antell, Hardy’s nephew, tells an interesting family story.

“I was too young to know Tom,” he said. “But I spent a great deal of time as a child with my Aunt Kate, his younger sister. And she had a big black glossy pussy cat which was supposed to be related to the one that ate the heart”

So he knew about the heart story as a child?

“Oh yes,” he recalled. “Aunt Kate told us about it as a kind of joke. It was always regarded

as a bit of harmless nonsense.”

But surely it was a an oddly macabre story to tell her young nephew about her beloved brother if it wasn’t true?

“I suppose it was,” he admitted.

Perhaps Cowley’s curate was in on the secret too. I have seen a statement signed by a young clergyman in the 1930s claiming first hand knowledge of the incident. The owner of the letter, who has always avoided publication, tells me that the signatory was a curate of Cowley’s, either at the time or of the funeral or immediately afterwards, but the owner also refused permission to reproduce or give further details of this interesting document.

In the final analysis, the only objective proof of the ‘Ardy’s ‘Eart story, one way or the other, lies buried in Stinsford churchyard, though I for one am happily convinced by the wealth of subjective detail and the quiet staying power of the myth, if myth it be.

I’m always quite sure that Thomas Hardy, the village atheist with an ever-open eye for the fey and mystical, would have been delighted by the idea of a hungry midnight grimalkin, so impertinently stealing his heart away.

Frank Smyth

THIS article first appeared in 1996 in the Wessex Journal, a country magazine long defunct and was re-printed in the Observer. The author, a pub-loving Fleet Street journalist who moved to Dorset in the Eighties, wrote a number of books, including Cause of Death, a study of forensic medicine. He was also a member of the Crime Writers’ Association and one of its judges for the Gold Dagger Award for non-fiction. He was also a great friend of Tolpuddle’s and this piece is re-published in tribute to his memory.