Did a cat get Hardy's heart?

We were wondering here whether the DNA key to the Hardys' syphilis (see posts below) might lie in Stinsford Churchyard in Dorset where Thomas Hardy's heart may be buried in the family grave site.

Most of the writer's body was cremated and the ashes packed off by train to poet's corner in Westminster Abbey. But the heart was supposed to have remaind behind.

Did it? A Dorset cat, it seems, may have snatched the heart off a table and carried it to the nearby woods. An old friend from the area has just emailed me with this unfortunate bit of local gossip.

He reminds me of the genius of Shakespeare in anticipating such scientific developments - and the anti-DNA warning "curst be he that moves my bones".

But Mrs Hardy's DNA alone would be enough to prove the TLS thesis this week. Perhaps there is a research possibility there.

Maybe someone has a souvenir lock of hair - from either him or her?

Comments

[Clayton Burns]

Has nobody at TLS heard at all of palingenesis? If you have the ashes, at Westminster Abbey, that's more than enough. If it should fail, digging up the Dorset cat that ate Hardy's heart is the quickest way to it. You may find inscribed on its DNA what the white owl wondered when it wondered "why." I have backtracked the aetiology of opiate addiction and proved it to be a sign of syphilis. Grandiose delusions may feature. That puts the diagnosis beyond doubt. In 1912...in 1913 the moon unexpectedly shone in June. The dark undying pain of the deodar-radiant path. Q.E.D.