Muse

Before we get started tonight, I wanted to let you in on a little secret. For the best sleep, there's nothing better than the Sleepy Bookshelf's premium feed. You'll have ad-free access to the entire catalogue, so you don't have to listen to things like this, plus exclusive bonus stories in between our longer books. Follow the link in the show notes to learn more and start your 7-day free trial tonight. Hello, it's Elizabeth, and I'm excited to share with you the newest show from Slumber Studios. It's called Sleepy History, and it's exactly what it sounds like. Intriguing stories, people, mysteries and events from history, delivered in a supremely calming atmosphere. it. Explore the legend of El Dorado, see what life was like for the Roman gladiators, uncover the myths and mysteries of Stonehenge. You'll find interesting but relaxing episodes like these on sleepy history and the same great production quality you've come to know and love from The Sleepy Bookshelf. So check it out and perhaps you'll have another way to get a good night's rest. Just search Sleepy History in your preferred podcast player. Good evening, and welcome to the Sleepy Bookshelf, where we put down our worries from the day and pick up a good book. I'm Elizabeth, your host, and it's so lovely to have you here with me tonight. This evening we are beginning Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy. First published in 1874, it was Hardy's first major literary success and remains one of his most popular novels. Set in the rural countryside of Hardy's fictional Wessex, It follows the independent and spirited Bathsheba Everdeen as she navigates life, love and responsibility. The novel centres on her relationships with three very different suitors, Gabriel Oak, Sergeant Troy and William Baldwood, and explores themes of love, loyalty, pride and fate. combining romance with vivid descriptions of Victorian rural life.

If this is your first visit to the Sleepy Bookshelf, don't worry if you drift off before I finish this part of the story. At the beginning of the next episode, I'll give you a thorough recap so you can rest easy without worrying about missing anything important. keep in mind that all of the books on this show are carefully selected and lightly edited to help you fall asleep we keep the heart of the story but soften anything that might feel too intense or unsettling so you can always enjoy a calm restful experience that's what makes this a sleepy bookshelf. Let's give ourselves now just a little time to be present in this moment. Lie or sit still, uncrossing your legs and perhaps keeping your arms by your sides, or maybe resting a hand on your chest and another on your stomach. Close your eyes and breathe evenly and naturally. Move your focus to the air coming into your body and leaving it, and notice what is happening while you breathe. Say quietly to yourself, I'm breathing in, I'm breathing out, and use this gentle rhythm to stay present. If any thoughts creep in, simply acknowledge them and let them slide away. And while you do that, I'll turn to them. the opening pages of Far From the Madding Crowd. Chapter One. Description of Farmer Oak. An Incident. When Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till they were within an unimportant distance of his ears.

His eyes were reduced to chinks, and diverging wrinkles appeared around them, extending upon his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketch of the rising sun. His Christian name was Gabriel, and on working days, he was a young man of sound judgment, easy motions, proper dress, and general good character. on sundays he was a man of misty views rather given to postponing and hampered by his best clothes and umbrella upon the whole one who felt himself to occupy morally that vast middle space of Laodicean neutrality, which lay between the communion people of the parish and the drunken section. That is, he went to church, but yawned privately by the time the congregation reached the Nicene Creed, and thought of what there would be for dinner when he meant to be listening to the sermon. Or, to state his character as it stood in the scale of public opinion, when his friends and critics were in tantrums, he was considered rather a bad man. When they were pleased, he was rather a good man. When they were neither, he was a man whose moral colour was a kind of pepper and salt mixture. Since he lived six times as many working days as Sundays, Oak's appearance in his old clothes was most peculiarly his own, the mental picture formed by his neighbours in imagining him being always dressed in that way. He wore a large-crowned felt hat, spread out at the base by tight jamming upon the head for security in high winds, and a coat like Dr. Johnson's, his lower extremities being encased in ordinary leather leggings and boots emphatically large, affording to each foot a roomy apartment, so constructed that any wearer might stand in a river all day long and know

nothing of damp, their maker being a conscientious man who endeavoured to compensate for any weakness in his cut by unstinted dimension and solidity. Mr. Oak carried about him by way of watch what may be called a small silver clock. In other words, it was a watch as to shape and intention, and a small clock as to size. This instrument, being several years older than Oak's grandfather, had the peculiarity of going either too fast, or not at all. The smaller of its hands, too, occasionally slipped round on the pivot, and thus, though the minutes were told with precision, nobody could be quite certain of the hour they belonged to. The stopping peculiarity of his watch, Oak remedied by thumps and shakes, and he escaped any evil consequences from the other two defects by constant comparisons with and observations of his watch. the sun and stars, and by pressing his face close to the glass of his neighbour's windows, till he could discern the hour marked by the green-faced timekeepers within. It may be mentioned that Oak's fob being difficult of access by reason of its somewhat high situation in the waistband of his trousers, which also lay at a remote height under his waistcoat. The watch was, as a necessity, pulled out by throwing the body to one side, compressing the mouth and face to a mere mass of ruddy flesh on account of the exertion required, and drawing up the watch by its chain like a bucket from a well. But some thoughtful persons who had seen him walking across one of his fields on a certain December morning, sunny and exceedingly mild, might have regarded Gabriel Oak in other aspects than these. In his face, one might notice that many of the hues and curves of youth had tarried on to manhood. There even remained in his remoter crannies some relics of the boy.

His height and breadth would have been sufficient to make his presence imposing had they been exhibited with due consideration. But there is a way some men have, rural and urban alike, for which the mind is more responsible than flesh and sinew. It is a way of curtailing their dimensions by their manner of showing them, and from a quiet modesty that would have become a vestal which seemed continually to impress upon him that he had no great claim on the world's room. Oak walked, unassumingly, and with a faintly perceptible bend, yet distinct from a bowing of the shoulders. This may be said to be a defect in an individual if he depends for his valuation more upon his appearance than upon his capacity to wear well, which Oak did not. He had just reached the time of life at which young is ceasing to be the prefix of man in speaking of one. He was at the brightest period of masculine growth, for his intellect and his emotions were clearly separated. He had passed the time during which the influence of youth indiscriminately mingles them in the character of impulse, and he had not yet arrived at the stage wherein they become united again, in the character of prejudice, by the influence of a wife and family. In short, he was twenty-eight and a bachelor. The field he was in this morning sloped to a ridge called Norcombe Hill. Through a spur of this hill ran the highway between Emminster and Chalk Newton. Casually glancing over the hedge, Oak saw coming down the incline before him an ornamental spring wagon, painted yellow and gaily marked drawn by two horses a wagoner walking alongside bearing a whip perpendicularly. The wagon was laden with household goods and window plants and on the apex of the hole sat a woman young and attractive.

Gabriel had not beheld the sight for more than half a minute, when the vehicle was brought to a standstill, just beneath his eyes. The tailboard of the wagon is gone, miss, said the wagoner. Then I heard it fall, said the girl in a soft, though not particularly low voice. I heard a noise I could not account for when we were coming up the hill. I'll run back. Do, she answered. The sensible horses stood, perfectly still, and the wagoner's steps sank fainter and fainter in the distance. The girl on the summit of the load sat, motionless, surrounded by tables and chairs, with their legs upwards, backened by an oak settle and ornamented in front by pots of geraniums, myrtles, and cactuses, together with a caged canary, all probably from the windows of the house just vacated. There was also a cap in a willow basket, from the partly opened lid of which she gazed with half-closed eyes and affectionately surveyed the small birds around. The handsome girl waited for some time idly in her place, and the only sound heard in the stillness was the hopping of the canary up and down on the perches of its prison. then she looked attentively downwards it was not at the bird nor at the cat it was an oblong package tied in paper and lying between them she turned her head to learn if the wagoner were coming he was not yet inside and her eyes crept back to the package her thoughts seeming to run upon what was inside it. At length, she drew the article into her lap and untied the paper covering. A small, swing-looking glass was disclosed, in which she proceeded to survey herself attentively. She parted her lips and smiled. It was a fine morning, and the sun lighted up to a scarlet glow the crimson jacket she wore,

and painted a soft luster upon her bright face and dark hair. the myrtles geraniums and cactuses packed around her were fresh and green and at such a leafless season they invested the whole concern of horses wagon furniture and girl with a peculiar vernal charm. What possessed her to indulge in such a performance in the sight of the sparrows, blackbirds, and unperceived farmer who were alone its spectators? Whether the smile began as a fictitious one to taste her capacity in that art, nobody knows. It ended certainly in a real smile. She blushed at herself, and seeing her reflection blush, blushed the more. The change from the customary spot and necessary occasion of such an act, from the dressing hour in a bedroom to a time of travelling out of doors, lent to the idle deed a novelty it did not intrinsically possess. The picture was a delicate one. Woman's prescriptive infirmity had stalked into the sunlight, which had clothed it in the freshness of an originality. A cynical inference was irresistible by Gabriel Oak as he regarded the scene, generous though he fain would have been. There was no necessity whatever for her looking in the glass. She did not adjust her hat, or pat her hair, or press a dimple into shape, or do one thing to signify that any such intention had been her motive in taking up the glass. she simply observed herself as a fair product of nature in the feminine kind her thoughts seeming to glide into far-off though likely dramas in which men would play a part. Vistas of probable triumphs, the smiles being of a face suggesting that hearts were imagined as lost and won. Still this was but conjecture, and the whole series of actions

was so idly put forth as to make it rash to assert that intention had any part in them at all. The wagoner's steps were heard returning. She put the glass in the paper, and the hole again into its place. When the wagon had passed on, Gabriel withdrew from his point of espion, and descending into the road, followed the vehicle to the turnpike gate, some way beyond the bottom of the hill. where the object of his contemplation now halted for the payment of toll. About twenty steps still remained between him and the gate, when he heard a dispute. It was a difference concerning two-pence between the persons with the wagon and the man at the tollbar. Mrs's niece is upon the top of things and she says that's enough that I've offered ye ye great miser and she won't pay any more these were the wagoner's words very well then Mrs's niece can't pass said the turnpike keeper closing the gate Oak looked from one to the other of the disputants and fell into a reverie. There was something in the tone of two-pence remarkably insignificant. Three-pence had had a definite value as money. It was an appreciable infringement on a day's wages, and as such, a higgling matter. But two-pence? here he said stepping forward and handing two pints to the gatekeeper let the young woman pass he looked up at her then she heard his words and looked down gabriel's features adhered throughout their form so exactly to the middle line between the beauty of St. John and the ugliness of Judas Iscariot as represented in a window of the church he attended, that not a single liniment could be selected and called worthy either of distinction or notoriety. The red-jacketed and dark-haired maiden seemed to think so too, for she carelessly glanced over him and told her man to drive on. She might have looked her thanks to Gabriel

on a minute scale, but she did not speak them. More probably she felt none, for in gaining her a passage, he had lost her her point, and we know how women take a favour of that kind. The gatekeeper surveyed the retreating vehicle. That's handsome maid, he said to O. But she has her fault, said Gabriel. True, farmer. And the greatest of them is. Well, what it is always. Beating people down? Ah, it is so. Oh, no. What then? Gabriel, perhaps a little piqued by the comely traveller's indifference, glanced back to where he had witnessed her performance over the hedge and said, Vanity. Chapter Two Night The Flock An Interior interior, another interior. It was nearly midnight on the eve of St. Thomas's, the shortest day in the year. A desolating wind wandered from the north over the hill where On Oak had watched the yellow wagon and its occupant in the sunshine of a few days earlier. Norcom Hill, not far from lonely Tollerdown, was one of the spots which suggest to a passerby that he is in the presence of a shape approaching the indestructible as nearly as any to be found on earth. It was a featureless convexity of chalk and soil, an ordinary specimen of those smoothly outlined perturbances of the globe, which may remain undisturbed on some great day of confusion, when far grander heights and dizzy granite precipices topple down. The hill was covered on its northern side by an ancient and decaying plantation of beaches, whose upper verge formed a line over the crest, fringing its arched curve against the sky like a mane. Tonight, these trees sheltered the southern slope from the keenest blasts which smoked the wood

and floundered through it with a sound as of grumbling or gushed over its crowning boughs in a weakened moan. The dry leaves in the ditch simmered and boiled in the same breezes. A tongue of air occasionally ferreting out a few and sending them spinning across the grass. A group or two of the latest in date amongst the dead multitude had remained till this very mid-winter time on the twigs which bore them, and in falling, rattled against the trunks with smart taps. Between this half-wooded, half-naked hill and the vague still horizon that its summit indistinctively commanded was a mysterious sheet of fathomless shade the sounds from which suggested that what it concealed bore some reduced resemblance to features here. The thin grasses, more or less coating the hill, were touched by the wind in breezes of differing powers and almost of differing natures, one rubbing the blades heavily, another raking them, piercingly, another brushing them like a soft broom. The instinctive act of humankind was to stand and listen, and learn how the trees on the right and the trees on the left wailed or chaunted to each other in the regular antiphonies of a cathedral choir. How hedges and other shapes to leeward then caught the note, lowering it to the tenderest sob. And how the hurrying gust then plunged into the south to be heard no more. The sky was clear, remarkably clear, and the twinkling of all the stars seemed to be but throbs of one body, timed by a common pulse. the north star was directly in the wind's eye

and since evening the bear had swung round it outwardly to the east till he was now at a right angle with the meridian a difference of colour in the stars often a red of than seen in England was really perceptible here The sovereign brilliancy of Sirius pierced the eye with a steely glitter The star called Capella was yellow Aldebaran and Betelges shone with a fiery red To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as this, the role of the world eastward is almost a palpable movement. The sensation may be caused by the panoramic glide of the stars past earthly objects, which is perceptible in a few minutes of stillness, or by the better outlook upon space that a hill affords or by the wind or by the solitude. But whatever be its origin, the impression of riding along is vivid and abiding. The poetry of motion is a phrase much in use and to enjoy the epic form of that gratification it is necessary to stand on a hill at a small hour of the night and having first expanded with a sense of difference from the mass of civilized mankind who are dream-wrapped and disregardful of all such proceedings at this time long and quietly watch your stately progress through the stars. After such a nocturnal reconnoitre, it is hard to get back to Earth and to believe that the consciousness of such majestic speeding is derived from a tiny human frame. Suddenly, an unexpected series of sounds began to be heard in this place up against the sky. They had a clearness, which was to be found nowhere in the wind, and a sequence which was to be found nowhere in nature.

They were the notes of Farmer Oak's flute. The tune was not floating, unhindered, into the open air. It seemed muffled in some way, and was altogether too curtailed in power to spread high or wide. It came from the direction of a small, dark object under the plantation hedge. A shepherd's hut, now presenting an outline to which an uninitiated person might have been puzzled to attach either meaning or use. The image as a whole was that of a small Noah's Ark, on a small Ararat, allowing the traditionary outlines and general form of the Ark, which are followed by toymakers. And by these means are established in men's imaginations among their firmest, because earliest impressions to pass as an approximate pattern. The hut stood on little wheels, which raised its floor about a foot from the ground. Such shepherd's huts are dragged into the fields when the lambing season comes on to shelter the shepherd in his enforced nightly attendance. It was only latterly that people had begun to call Gabriel Farmer Oak. During the twelve-month preceding this time, he had been enabled by sustained efforts of history and chronic good spirits to lease a small sheep farm of which Norcom Hill was apportioned, and stock it with two hundred sheep. previously he had been a bailiff for a short time and earlier still a shepherd only having from his childhood assisted his father in tending the flocks of large proprietors till old gabriel sank to rest this venture unaided and alone into the paths of farming as master and not as man with an advance of sheep not yet paid for was a critical juncture with gabriel oak and he recognised his position clearly. The first movement in his new progress was the lambing of his ewes,

and sheep, having been his specialty from his youth, he wisely refrained from deputing the task of tending them at this season to a hireling or a novice. The wind continued to beat about the corners of the hut, but the flute playing ceased. A rectangular space of light appeared in the side of the hut, and in the opening, the outline of Farmer Oak's figure. he carried a lantern in his hand and closing the door behind him came forward and busied himself about this nook of the field for nearly twenty minutes the lantern light appearing and disappearing here and there and brightening him or darkening him as he stood before or behind it oak's motions though they had acquired energy were slow and their deliberateness accorded well with his occupation fitness being a basis of beauty nobody could have denied that his steady swings and turns in and about the flock had elements of grace. Yet although if occasion demanded, he could do or think a thing with as mercurial a dash as can the men of towns who are more to the manner born, his special power, morally, physically, and mentally, was static, owing little or nothing to momentum as a rule. A close examination of the ground hereabout, even by the wan starlight only, revealed how a portion of what would have been casually called a wild slope had been appropriated by Farmer Oak for his great purpose this winter. Detached hurdles, thatched with straw, were stuck into the ground at various scattered points, amid and under which the wittish forms of his meek ewes moved and rustled. The ring of the sheep bell, which had been silent during his absence, recommenced in tones that had more mellowness than clearness, owing to an increasing growth of surrounding wool. This continued till Oak withdrew again from the

flock. He returned to the hut, bringing in his arms a newborn lamb, consisting of four legs, large enough for a full-grown sheep, united by a seemingly inconsiderable membrane, about half the substance of the legs collectively, which constituted the animal's entire body just at present. The little speck of life he placed on a wisp of hay before the small stove, where a can of milk was simmering. Oak extinguished the lantern by blowing into it, and then, pinching the snuff, the cot being lighted by a candle suspended by a twisted wire, a rather hard couch, formed of a few corn sacks, thrown carelessly down, covered half the floor of this little habitation. And here, the young man stretched himself along, loosened his woolen cravat, and closed his eyes. In about the time a person unaccustomed to bodily labour would have decided upon which side to lie, Farmer Oak was asleep. the inside of the heart as it now presented itself was cozy and alluring and the scarlet handful of fire in addition to the candle reflecting its own genial color upon whatever it could reach flung associations of enjoyment even over utensils and tools. In the corner stood the sheep crook, and along a shelf at one side Thank you. were ranged bottles and canisters of the simple preparations pertaining to ovine surgery and physic. Spirits of wine, turpentine, tar, magnesia, ginger and castor oil being the chief. On a triangular shelf across the corner stood bread, bacon, cheese and a cup for ale or cider which was supplied from a flagon beneath. Beside the provisions lay the flute, whose notes had lately been called forth by the lonely watcher to beguile a tedious hour.

The house was ventilated by two round holes, like the lights of a ship's cabin, with wood slides. the lamb revived by the warmth began to bleat and the sound entered gabriel's ears and brain with an instant meaning as expected sounds will passing from the profoundest sleep to the most alert wakefulness with the same ease that had accompanied the reverse operation Soon, he looked at his watch, found that the hour hand had shifted again, put on his hat, took the lamb in his arms, and carried it into the darkness. After placing the little creature with its mother, he stood and carefully examined the sky to ascertain the time of night from the altitudes of the stars. The Dogstar and Aldebaran pointing to the restless Pleiades were halfway up the southern sky, and between them hung Orion, which gorgeous constellation never burnt more vividly than now as it soared forth above the rim of the landscape. Castor and Pollux, with their quiet shine, were almost on the meridian. The barren and gloomy square of Pegasus was creeping ground to the northwest. Far away, through the plantation, Vega sparkled like a lamp suspended amid the leafless trees. and Cassiopeia's chair stood daintily poised on the uppermost boughs. One o'clock, said Gabriel. Being a man not without a frequent consciousness that there was some charm in this life he led, he stood still after looking at the sky as a useful instrument and regarded it in an appreciative spirit, as a work of art, superlatively beautiful. For a moment he seemed impressed with the speaking loneliness of the scene, or rather with the complete abstraction from all its compass of the sights and sounds of man. Human shapes, interferences, troubles and joys were all as if they were not

And there seemed to be on the shaded hemisphere of the globe no sentient being save himself He could fancy them all gone round to the sunny side Occupied thus, with eyes stretched afar, Oak gradually perceived that what he had previously taken to be a star low down behind the outskirts of the plantation was in reality no such thing. It was an artificial light, almost close at hand. To find themselves utterly alone at night where company is desirable and expected makes some people fearful. But a case more trying by far to the nerves is to discover some mysterious companionship. when intuition, sensation, memory, analogy, testimony, probability, induction, every kind of evidence in the logician's list have united to persuade consciousness that it is quite in isolation. Farmer Oak went towards the plantation and pushed through its lower boughs to the windy side. A dim mass under the slope reminded him that a shed occupied a place here, the site being a cutting into the slope of the hill, so that at its back part, the roof was almost level with the ground. In front, it was formed of board, nailed to posts, and covered with tar as a preservative. Through crevices in the roof and side spread streaks and dots of light, a combination of which made the radiance that had attracted him. Oak stepped up behind, where, leaning down upon the roof and putting his eye close to a hole, he could see into the interior clearly. The place contained two women and two cows. By the side of the latter, a streaming bran mash stood in a bucket. it. One of the women was past middle age. Her companion was apparently young and graceful. He could form no decided opinion upon her looks, her position being almost beneath his eye so that

he saw her in a bird's-eye view, as Milton's Satan first saw paradise. She wore no bonnet tall hat, but had enveloped herself in a large cloak, which was carelessly flung over her head as a covering. There, now we'll go home, said the elder of the two, resting her knuckles upon her hips and looking at their goings-on as a whole. Oh, I do hope Daisy will fetch round again now. I've never been more frightened in my life, but I don't mind breaking my rest if she recovers. The young woman, whose eyelids were apparently inclined to fall together on the smallest provocation of silence, yawned without parting her lips to any inconvenient extent, whereupon Gabriel caught the infection and slightly yawned in sympathy. I wish we were rich enough to pay a man to do these things, she said. As we are not, we must do them ourselves, said the other, for you must help me if you stay. Well, my hat is gone, however, continued the younger. It went over the hedge, I think. The idea of such a slight wind catching it. The cow, standing erect, was of the Devon breed and was encased in a tight, warm hide of rich Indian red, as absolutely uniform from eyes to tail, as if the animal had been dipped in a dye of that colour, her long back being mathematically level. the other was spotted grey and white beside her oak now noticed a little calf about a day old looking idiotically at the two women which showed that it had not long been accustomed to the phenomenon of eyesight and often turning to the lantern which apparently it mistook for the moon Inherited instinct, having as yet had little time for correction by experience. Between the sheep and the cows, Lucina had been busy on Norcom Hill lately. I think we had better send for some oatmeal, said the elder woman. There's no more bran. Yes, aunt, and I'll ride over for it as soon as it is light. But there's no side saddle. I can ride on the other. Trust me. Oak, upon hearing these remarks, became more curious to observe her features, but this prospect being denied him by the hooding effect of the cloak and by his aerial position,

he felt himself drawing upon his fancy for their... details. In making even, horizontal and clear inspections, we colour and mould according to the wants within us, whatever our eyes bring in. Had Gabriel been able from the first to get a distinct view of her countenance, his estimate, of it as very handsome or slightly so, would have been as his soul required a divinity at the moment, or was ready supplied with one. Having for some time known the want of a satisfactory form to fill an increasing void within him, his position moreover affording the widest scope for his fancy, he painted her a beauty. By one of those whimsical coincidences in which nature, like a busy mother, seems to spare a moment from her unremitting labours to turn and make her children smile, the girl now dropped the cloak, and four tumbled ropes of black hair over a red jacket. Oak knew her instantly as the heroine of the yellow wagon, myrtles, and looking-glass, prosily as the woman who owed him two pence. They placed the calf beside its mother again, took up the lantern, and went out. The light sinking down the hill till it was no more than a nebula. Gabriel Oak returned to his flock.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.