Chapter: <CHAPTER>
BOOK THREE -- THE FASCINATION
1--"My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is"


In Clym Yeobright's face could be dimly seen the typical countenance
of the future. Should there be a classic period to art hereafter, its
Pheidias may produce such faces. The view of life as a thing to be put
up with, replacing that zest for existence which was so intense in early
civilizations, must ultimately enter so thoroughly into the constitution
of the advanced races that its facial expression will become accepted
as a new artistic departure. People already feel that a man who lives
without disturbing a curve of feature, or setting a mark of mental
concern anywhere upon himself, is too far removed from modern
perceptiveness to be a modern type. Physically beautiful men--the glory
of the race when it was young--are almost an anachronism now; and we may
wonder whether, at some time or other, physically beautiful women may
not be an anachronism likewise.

The truth seems to be that a long line of disillusive centuries has
permanently displaced the Hellenic idea of life, or whatever it may
be called. What the Greeks only suspected we know well; what their
Aeschylus imagined our nursery children feel. That old-fashioned
revelling in the general situation grows less and less possible as we
uncover the defects of natural laws, and see the quandary that man is in
by their operation.

The lineaments which will get embodied in ideals based upon this new
recognition will probably be akin to those of Yeobright. The observer's
eye was arrested, not by his face as a picture, but by his face as a
page; not by what it was, but by what it recorded. His features were
attractive in the light of symbols, as sounds intrinsically common
become attractive in language, and as shapes intrinsically simple become
interesting in writing.

He had been a lad of whom something was expected. Beyond this all had
been chaos. That he would be successful in an original way, or that he
would go to the dogs in an original way, seemed equally probable. The
only absolute certainty about him was that he would not stand still in
the circumstances amid which he was born.

Hence, when his name was casually mentioned by neighbouring yeomen,
the listener said, "Ah, Clym Yeobright--what is he doing now?" When the
instinctive question about a person is, What is he doing? it is
felt that he will be found to be, like most of us, doing nothing in
particular. There is an indefinite sense that he must be invading some
region of singularity, good or bad. The devout hope is that he is doing
well. The secret faith is that he is making a mess of it. Half a dozen
comfortable market-men, who were habitual callers at the Quiet Woman
as they passed by in their carts, were partial to the topic. In fact,
though they were not Egdon men, they could hardly avoid it while they
sucked their long clay tubes and regarded the heath through the window.
Clym had been so inwoven with the heath in his boyhood that hardly
anybody could look upon it without thinking of him. So the subject
recurred: if he were making a fortune and a name, so much the better
for him; if he were making a tragical figure in the world, so much the
better for a narrative.

The fact was that Yeobright's fame had spread to an awkward extent
before he left home. "It is bad when your fame outruns your means," said
the Spanish Jesuit Gracian. At the age of six he had asked a Scripture
riddle: "Who was the first man known to wear breeches?" and applause
had resounded from the very verge of the heath. At seven he painted the
Battle of Waterloo with tiger-lily pollen and black-currant juice, in
the absence of water-colours. By the time he reached twelve he had in
this manner been heard of as artist and scholar for at least two miles
round. An individual whose fame spreads three or four thousand yards in
the time taken by the fame of others similarly situated to travel six or
eight hundred, must of necessity have something in him. Possibly Clym's
fame, like Homer's, owed something to the accidents of his situation;
nevertheless famous he was.

He grew up and was helped out in life. That waggery of fate which
started Clive as a writing clerk, Gay as a linen-draper, Keats as a
surgeon, and a thousand others in a thousand other odd ways, banished
the wild and ascetic heath lad to a trade whose sole concern was with
the especial symbols of self-indulgence and vainglory.

The details of this choice of a business for him it is not necessary
to give. At the death of his father a neighbouring gentleman had kindly
undertaken to give the boy a start, and this assumed the form of sending
him to Budmouth. Yeobright did not wish to go there, but it was the only
feasible opening. Thence he went to London; and thence, shortly after,
to Paris, where he had remained till now.

Something being expected of him, he had not been at home many days
before a great curiosity as to why he stayed on so long began to arise
in the heath. The natural term of a holiday had passed, yet he still
remained. On the Sunday morning following the week of Thomasin's
marriage a discussion on this subject was in progress at a hair-cutting
before Fairway's house. Here the local barbering was always done at
this hour on this day, to be followed by the great Sunday wash of the
inhabitants at noon, which in its turn was followed by the great Sunday
dressing an hour later. On Egdon Heath Sunday proper did not begin till
dinner-time, and even then it was a somewhat battered specimen of the
day.

These Sunday-morning hair-cuttings were performed by Fairway; the victim
sitting on a chopping-block in front of the house, without a coat, and
the neighbours gossiping around, idly observing the locks of hair as
they rose upon the wind after the snip, and flew away out of sight to
the four quarters of the heavens. Summer and winter the scene was the
same, unless the wind were more than usually blusterous, when the stool
was shifted a few feet round the corner. To complain of cold in sitting
out of doors, hatless and coatless, while Fairway told true stories
between the cuts of the scissors, would have been to pronounce yourself
no man at once. To flinch, exclaim, or move a muscle of the face at
the small stabs under the ear received from those instruments, or at
scarifications of the neck by the comb, would have been thought a gross
breach of good manners, considering that Fairway did it all for nothing.
A bleeding about the poll on Sunday afternoons was amply accounted for
by the explanation. "I have had my hair cut, you know."

The conversation on Yeobright had been started by a distant view of the
young man rambling leisurely across the heath before them.

"A man who is doing well elsewhere wouldn't bide here two or three weeks
for nothing," said Fairway. "He's got some project in 's head--depend
upon that."

"Well, 'a can't keep a diment shop here," said Sam.

"I don't see why he should have had them two heavy boxes home if he had
not been going to bide; and what there is for him to do here the Lord in
heaven knows."

Before many more surmises could be indulged in Yeobright had come near;
and seeing the hair-cutting group he turned aside to join them. Marching
up, and looking critically at their faces for a moment, he said, without
introduction, "Now, folks, let me guess what you have been talking
about."

"Ay, sure, if you will," said Sam.

"About me."

"Now, it is a thing I shouldn't have dreamed of doing, otherwise," said
Fairway in a tone of integrity; "but since you have named it, Master
Yeobright, I'll own that we was talking about 'ee. We were wondering
what could keep you home here mollyhorning about when you have made such
a world-wide name for yourself in the nick-nack trade--now, that's the
truth o't."

"I'll tell you," said Yeobright with unexpected earnestness. "I am
not sorry to have the opportunity. I've come home because, all things
considered, I can be a trifle less useless here than anywhere else. But
I have only lately found this out. When I first got away from home I
thought this place was not worth troubling about. I thought our life
here was contemptible. To oil your boots instead of blacking them, to
dust your coat with a switch instead of a brush--was there ever anything
more ridiculous? I said."

"So 'tis; so 'tis!"

"No, no--you are wrong; it isn't."

"Beg your pardon, we thought that was your meaning?"

"Well, as my views changed my course became very depressing. I found
that I was trying to be like people who had hardly anything in common
with myself. I was endeavouring to put off one sort of life for another
sort of life, which was not better than the life I had known before. It
was simply different."

"True; a sight different," said Fairway.

"Yes, Paris must be a taking place," said Humphrey. "Grand shop-winders,
trumpets, and drums; and here be we out of doors in all winds and
weathers--"

"But you mistake me," pleaded Clym. "All this was very depressing. But
not so depressing as something I next perceived--that my business was
the idlest, vainest, most effeminate business that ever a man could
be put to. That decided me--I would give it up and try to follow some
rational occupation among the people I knew best, and to whom I could
be of most use. I have come home; and this is how I mean to carry out
my plan. I shall keep a school as near to Egdon as possible, so as to be
able to walk over here and have a night-school in my mother's house.
But I must study a little at first, to get properly qualified. Now,
neighbours, I must go."

And Clym resumed his walk across the heath.

"He'll never carry it out in the world," said Fairway. "In a few weeks
he'll learn to see things otherwise."

"'Tis good-hearted of the young man," said another. "But, for my part, I
think he had better mind his business."


</CHAPTER>

 Hardy gives us a detailed description of Clym Yeobright, similar to the one we got of Eustacia back in Book 1, Chapter 7. In a nutshell, Clym is handsome and looks like he belongs to the future. Clym was the local golden boy of whom great things were expected. He went to Paris and was successful, but now he's returned home and doesn't plan to leave. The Egdon residents are confused and concerned about their golden boy. Clym comes upon a group of them getting their weekly haircut from the local amateur barber. Maybe Clym plans to open up a salon? Nope, he plans to open up a school. The townsfolk are less-than-impressed with his crazy ideas and think he should go back to Paris.

