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From the moment
she first met Thomas Hardy in 1905, having written him
an admiring letter, Florence Dugdale seemed destined for controversy.
Her
presence at Max Gate, both before and after the death of his first wife
Emma,
and her clandestine courtship with a man nearly forty years her senior,
sparked
suspicion among the locals and scorn from the Gifford family. She had
wanted to
be a writer herself, but was drawn into Hardy’s life as his ‘secretary’
and
companion, and within a year of their own marriage was humiliated by
his
publication of poems commemorating the late Emma and his painful
relationship
with her.
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FLORENCE
Mistress
of Max Gate
by Peter
Tait |
"All of this was to the chagrin of Thomas who was
concerned lest the newspapers found out he was there also and in
Florence’s company. The great joy of
Aldeburgh, as he told Florence, was its anonymity. It was somewhere he
could be
himself and Wells had no right jeopardising that because of his
careless
meanderings. ... It appeared to be an unwritten rule of the
house
that what happened in Aldeburgh stayed in Aldeburgh, and with
that in mind Thomas appeared keen that
they spend as much time together as possible. "
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