Emma Gifford

Emma Lavinia Gifford (24 November 1840 – 27 November 1912) was an English writer and suffragist, who was the first wife of the novelist and poet Thomas Hardy. Early life Emma Gifford was born in Plymouth, Devon, on 24 November 1840 The second youngest of five children, her father was John Attersoll Gifford, a solicitor, and she was named after her mother, Emma (Farman) Gifford. Emma's father retired early and relied on his mother's private income, so when her grandmother died in 1860, the family had to make economies and moved to a cheaper, rented house in Bodmin, Cornwall. Emma and her elder sister Helen had to work as governesses, and Helen became an unpaid companion to a woman in whose home she met her husband, the Reverend Caddell Holder. Emma joined her in 1868 to help with housekeeping and to run the parish. Marriage Emma Gifford met the writer Thomas Hardy in 1870 when he was working as an architect. Hardy had been commissioned to prepare a report on the condition of St Julitta's, the parish church of St Juliot, near Boscastle in Cornwall. Their courtship inspired A Pair of Blue Eyes, Hardy's third novel. They did not marry until four years later on 17 September 1874 at St Peter's Church, Paddington, London. The ceremony was conducted by Emma's uncle, Edwin Hamilton Gifford, canon of Worcester Cathedral and later archdeacon of London. The Hardys had a honeymoon in Rouen and Paris. Given Thomas Hardy's comparatively humble origins, Emma "regarded herself as her husband's social superior, and in later life would make embarrassing references in public to the gap in class that existed between them". Later life The Hardys were never able to have children, which may have affected their relationship. It was observed that the couple did not get on with each other; A. C. Benson noted, "It gave me a sense of something intolerable the thought of his having to live day and night with the absurd, inconsequent, huffy, rambling old lady. They don't get on together at all. The marriage was thought a misalliance for her, when he was poor and undistinguished, and she continues to resent it.... He (Hardy) is not agreeable to her either, but his patience must be incredibly tried. She is so queer, and yet has to be treated as rational, while she is full, I imagine, of suspicions and jealousies and affronts which must be half insane"; a frequent visitor to the household, Evelyn Evans, said Emma Hardy "was considered very odd by the townspeople of Dorchester....