Hardy Correspondence

An important letter by literary giant Thomas Hardy has been jointly purchased by Dorset Archives Trust and the Thomas Hardy Society for public benefit. The handwritten letter, composed in June 1922, six years before the author’s death was addressed to Sir Clifford Allbutt, Regius Professor of Physic at Cambridge. Hardy references the “strange experience” of visiting a mental institution, Clerkenwell House with Allbutt and of his fascination with meeting the patients there.  In the letter, Hardy also alludes to his first meeting with Allbutt in 1893, and that given that so much time has elapsed since then and because of Hardy’s own advanced years, refers to the two of them as “the remnants of the Victorians of that day”.