When Thomas Hardy was sent to St Juliot church near Boscastle in 1870 to work on its restoration, he expected to spend a few weeks on architectural duties. Instead, the visit transformed his life. Hardy met Emma Gifford, who became his wife, and the rugged Cornish
That novel, A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873), is rooted in the cliffs between Boscastle and Tintagel, landscapes now followed by the South West Coast Path. Its heroine, Elfride Swancourt, was modelled on Emma, and the wild Atlantic coast becomes a backdrop for love, loss, and danger. The book gave English literature its first true “cliffhanger,” when a character is left literally dangling over a Cornish precipice.
Hardy later recalled the Cornish coast as a place of both inspiration and regret. After Emma’s death, he wrote some of his most personal poems, haunted by their youthful walks around Boscastle:
“I look and see it there, shrinking, shrinking, / I look back at it amid the rain / For the very last time; for the very last time.”
Though his stay was brief, Hardy’s Cornish interlude left a deep mark on both his work and his heart. Walking the Boscastle–Tintagel cliffs, it is easy to feel the same mixture of awe and fragility that shaped Hardy’s vision of Wessex and beyond.
“Still in all its chasmal beauty bulks old Beeny to the sky.”
— Thomas Hardy, Beeny Cliff
“O the opal and the sapphire of that wandering western sea.”
— Thomas Hardy, Beeny Cliff
“What if still in chasmal beauty looms that wild weird western shore.”
— Thomas Hardy, Beeny Cliff
“Beeny did not quiver, / Juliot grew not gray, / Thin Valency’s river / Held its wonted way.”
— Thomas Hardy, A Death-Day Recalled
“Why go to Saint-Juliot? What’s Juliot to me? … Or a Vallency Valley … Or Beeny, or Bos with its flounce flinging mist?”
— Thomas Hardy, A Dream or No
“As I drive to the junction of lane and highway, / And the drizzle bedrenches the waggonette.”
— Thomas Hardy, At Castle Boterel
“I look behind at the fading byway, / And see on its slope, now glistening wet.”
— Thomas Hardy, At Castle Boterel
“I look and see it there, shrinking, shrinking, / I look back at it amid the rain / For the very last time.”
— Thomas Hardy, At Castle Boterel