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The Full Text of “A Wife in London”
1I — The Tragedy
2She sits in the tawny vapour
3 That the City lanes have uprolled,
4 Behind whose webby fold on fold
5Like a waning taper
6 The street-lamp glimmers cold.
7A messenger's knock cracks smartly,
8 Flashed news is in her hand
9 Of meaning it dazes to understand
10Though shaped so shortly:
11 He—has fallen—in the far South Land...
12II — The Irony
13'Tis the morrow; the fog hangs thicker,
14 The postman nears and goes:
15 A letter is brought whose lines disclose
16By the firelight flicker
17 His hand, whom the worm now knows:
18Fresh—firm—penned in highest feather —
19 Page-full of his hoped return,
20 And of home-planned jaunts by brake and burn
21In the summer weather,
22 And of new love that they would learn.
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“A Wife in London” Introduction
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"A Wife in London" is a bleak anti-war poem by the English poet Thomas Hardy. It was composed two months after the start of the Boer War (1899), a brutal conflict between the British Empire, the South African Republic, and the Orange Free State. Around this time, one prominent newspaper denounced Hardy as a pacifist. The poem focuses on a woman who receives the tragic news of her husband's death in the war. Then, to make matters worse, a letter from the husband himself arrives, talking optimistically about future plans. Hardy made his name as a novelist, writing books such as Jude the Obscure and Tess of the D'Urbervilles, but he focused on poetry later on in his career.
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“A Wife in London” Summary
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The wife of the of the title is sitting at home, surrounded by the dull orange fog that the streets of Victorian London produce. The fog has a spidery quality to it. Through the mistiness, the street lamp shines dimly.
Suddenly, there is a loud and purposeful knock at the door. A messenger gives the wife a short but bewildering message. It tells that her husband has died at war in South Africa.
It is the following day and the London fog has grown thicker. The postman arrives and delivers a letter to the wife. By firelight, she opens the letter and sees the handwriting of her husband, who is now dead.
The letter has an air of confidence, evidently written enthusiastically. In in it, the husband talks optimistically about what the two of them will do when he comes back. He looks forward to walking with her in the summer by country streams and greenery, and anticipates the development of their love.
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“A Wife in London” Themes
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War
“A Wife in London” is an anti-war poem that seeks to illuminate the absurdity and tragedy that go arm-in-arm with violent conflict. It is a message of war’s hopelessness—how war cuts life short needlessly, affecting not just those immediately involved but those back home as well. The poem argues that war is not just tragic, but also unnecessary, and suggests that people are wrong to think of war as something noble or heroic.
The poem is a tale told in two sections, which concern two very different pieces of communication. In the first section, a wife receives news of her husband’s death in battle. In the second, set the next day, she receives a letter from the husband himself. The mismatch in content and timing between the official telegram and the husband’s letter develop the poem’s central message of war’s absurd hopelessness.
The poem has a domestic setting, focusing on a wife whose husband has gone to war (in this case to fight for the British in the Boer War). Her isolation is established from the beginning, as she sits in the murky fog of Victorian London. The setting suggests that decisions to go to war take place in a kind of moral fog; that is, war makes morality itself unclear. The wife is a passive figure—she takes no action, things only happen to her. Her helplessness, then, may be a stand-in for mankind’s inability to stop itself from going to war. When news comes of her husband’s death, the short message uses the euphemistic “fallen” to mask what was probably a horrible death. This unemotional language speaks to the disconnect between the unfeeling official bureaucracy of war and the all-too-real tragedy it visits upon soldiers and their families.
In the poem’s second event, the wife receives a letter from her husband the next day—because of the slowness of mail (as opposed to the speed of underwater cable-enabled telegrams), this communication is effectively from the grave. The letter is full of hope, with her husband looking forward to his return and their imminent time together. But, of course, war has cut this young life short. The promise of good times to come only highlights the fact they never will. The letter makes a tragic scenario even worse, painfully reminding the wife of her sudden loss. As described in the poem’s two events, the wife represents all loved ones who lose someone in war—these deaths, though eventually just a number in the history books, are immediate, visceral and, as the poem ultimately argues, unnecessary. The sense of the futility of war is developed as much by what is left out of the poem as by what is present. That is, there is a notable lack of any heroism or honor—there is no patriotic language nor suggestion of noble sacrifice. The overall effect, then, makes the husband’s death feel devoid of meaning or purpose.
The husband’s letter speaks of “new love that they would learn” on his return, suggesting further development of the love between husband and wife. Of course, his death is already confirmed and he will never come home. This knowledge, then, modifies the poem’s conclusion—the “new love” that the wife will have to learn, alone, is that of a widow for her deceased husband. The poem thus ends on a double tragedy: one life cut short by death, and a second life irreversibly altered by the death of a loved one. “A Wife in London,” then, has nothing positive to say about war and focuses only on these tragic details, suggesting that war itself has no higher purpose or justification. Cleverly, it uses distancing—in the husband’s absence first at war and then in death—to bring the reality of war closer to the reader, who is made to feel the wife’s loss and thereby to reflect on bigger questions of who war is for, what it achieves, and whether it’s ever worth it.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “A Wife in London”
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Lines 1-2
I — The Tragedy
She sits in the tawny vapourThe poem begins with scene-setting. Readers already know who the subject of the poem is—the "wife" from the title. Indeed, they also know that the poem is set in London.
A sense of passivity is introduced from the very first line. "Sits" is not a very active verb, and it gently indicates the wife's helplessness in her particular situation—her husband has gone to war and is far away, and whatever happens to him is out of her control.
"Tawny vapour" describes a very specific type of fog particular to London at the time. It was partly mist from the river, but mostly consisted of emissions from chimneys and factories. It had a particular yellowy-brown tinge, which earned it the unappetizing nickname of "pea soup" (and it was also known as "smog"). Its presence here is a kind of pathetic fallacy—though it is more man-made than natural—which creates a feeling of murkiness, as though it is hard to see clearly. As this is a poem that discusses the hopeless absurdity of war, the obscurity of the fog surrounding the wife gestures towards the similarly murky morality of armed conflict. The slowness of the assonant vowel sounds in the phrase (/i/ in "sits" and "in," /a/ in "tawny" and "vapour") also helps to conjure this idea of the smog enveloping the city and forming a kind of inescapable confusion.
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Lines 3-6
That the City lanes have uprolled,
Behind whose webby fold on fold
Like a waning taper
The street-lamp glimmers cold.
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Lines 7-11
A messenger's knock cracks smartly,
Flashed news is in her hand
Of meaning it dazes to understand
Though shaped so shortly:
He—has fallen—in the far South Land... -
Lines 12-14
II — The Irony
'Tis the morrow; the fog hangs thicker,
The postman nears and goes: -
Lines 1-1
A letter is brought whose lines disclose
By the firelight flicker
His hand, whom the worm now knows:
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Lines 18-22
Fresh—firm—penned in highest feather —
Page-full of his hoped return,
And of home-planned jaunts by brake and burn
In the summer weather,
And of new love that they would learn.
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“A Wife in London” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
Alliteration occurs intermittently throughout "A Wife in London." It is generally used to make the poem's imagery more vivid—that is, to make the words sound like what they're describing.
The first instance is in the third line of the first stanza. The /f/ sounds combine across "fold on fold" to create an enveloping sound that evokes a spider's web and generally speaks to the way the London fog surrounds the wife.
The next example of alliteration is in "shaped so shortly" in the penultimate line of the second stanza. The uniformity of the sounds emphasizes the "shortness" of the message. It's as if there isn't time for any other sounds to be in there, such is the urgency of the communication.
In the third stanza, "firelight flicker" has a sonic quality to it that is reminiscent of a flame on the edge of going out. These /f/ sounds continue in the first two lines of the final stanza, contrasting the idea of extinguishment (of flame and of life) with the perky optimism of the husband's words. This is part of the irony mentioned in the section title.
The repeated /h/ and /b/ sounds in lines 19 and 20 add a final note of tragic contrast by highlighting the upbeat, joyful tone of the husband's letter. The breathy /h/ sounds of "hoped" and "home" conjure a sense of breathless excitement, as the husband puts all his hopes in the idea of returning home. The /b/ sounds of "brake" and "burn" sound lively and active, which reinforces the idea of the husband and wife out for "jaunts" in summer—happy occasions which, of course, will never happen.
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Assonance
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Caesura
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Metonymy
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Synecdoche
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Pathetic Fallacy
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Irony
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Enjambment
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Simile
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“A Wife in London” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- tawny
- vapour
- City
- uprolled
- webby
- fold on fold
- waning
- taper
- smartly
- South Land
- morrow
- highest feather
- jaunts
- brake
- burn
tawny-
Orange-brown or yellowy-brown.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “A Wife in London”
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Form
The poem consists of two distinct sections, each with its own heading: The Tragedy and The Irony.
In each of these two sections, there are two stanzas, all of which are quintains (five-line stanzas). The form is fairly plain and simple, but the division between the two sections does help the poem frame both the "tragedy" and the "irony" of the story related. Each section contains one piece of communication—the first brings news of the husband's death, and the second brings his hopeful letter. The form, then, mirrors the mismatched timing of these events by following them chronologically—from one day to the next. The form also contributes to the passivity and helplessness of the wife: the jump from one day to the next means that the reader gets no description of her grief, only the events that cause it. The reader must then, in a way, engage with the poem by filling in the gaps and imagining the wife's state of mind.
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Meter
The meter in "A Wife in London" is quite inconsistent. Generally, the poem's momentum comes from the rhyme, rather than the relatively non-existent meter. The lines vary between three stresses and four stresses, and no metrical foot dominates throughout. Occasionally, the does slip into consistent iambs, as in line 4:
Behind | whose web | by fold | on fold
and line 14, which captures the patterns of the coming and going of the postman:
The post- | man nears |and goes
But those lines are exceptions to the rule, rather than the rule.
The poem does occasionally use stress in interesting and evocative ways. For instance, the use of stresses is notable in the first line of the second stanza. Three stresses in a row create the sound of knocking, making the messenger's arrival an interruption in both form and content:
A messenger's knock cracks smartly
Overall, the lack of a dominant meter lends the poem a prosaic, almost mundane rhythmic quality. This could be interpreted as reflecting the fact that what happens in the poem is actually quite unremarkable—war always creates casualties, and those deaths have terrible consequences for loved ones. Though the event is momentous and tragic for the wife, it's an everyday occurrence in armed conflict—and the prose-like quality of the mostly meter-less writing embodies this commonplace reality.
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Rhyme Scheme
The rhyme scheme in "A Wife in London" follows an ABBAB formula in each stanza throughout. So the overall rhyme scheme can be written as:
ABBAB CDDCD EFFEF GHHGH
The rhymes establish in the ear of the reader very early on, giving a sense of forward momentum to what happens in the poem. This relentless rhythm makes the events seem inevitable, linking the tragedy of the husband's individual death with the overwhelming nature of warfare more generally.
Note that the rhyme between "smartly" and "shortly" in stanza 2 is not a perfect rhyme. This doesn't signify a lapse in concentration on the writer's part, but rather represents the disruptive effect of the contents of the messenger's telegram. The news disorientates the wife, and the subtle break in the rhyme scheme reflects her fractured state of mind.
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“A Wife in London” Speaker
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The speaker in "A Wife in London" is third-person and detached. It offers no explicit commentary on what happens in the poem, instead functioning as a narrative voice (a choice that is perhaps reflective of Hardy's career as a novelist). The distant sound of the speaker's voice means that the poem lacks emotional engagement—the reader hears nothing from the wife about the sudden onset of grief, and the speaker offers no information about her experience. This lack conjures a sense of futility, and in a way reflects the fact that the husband is just another death among many others. The wife's voice is completely replaced by the cold, almost bureaucratic tone of the speaker's voice, which reinforces the idea that she is at the mercy of larger forces that she cannot control. Additionally, the seeming distance of the speaker reflects the way that the wife is isolated from her husband both by his initial geographical distance at war, and, later, by the impossible distance between life and death.
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“A Wife in London” Setting
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As the title makes clear, the poem is set in London. Many of Hardy's poems were set in Wessex—a collective term for a large area of south-western England—and this poem is notable as an exception. In part, the urban setting allows for the use of smog as a pathetic fallacy, which creates an oppressive and murky atmosphere.
But London is also important for another reason—it was the political center of the British Empire (and is, of course, still the heart of decision-making for the country more generally). The tragedy thus takes place not just in southern Africa, where the husband died, but in the very political environment in which the decision to go to war was made in the first place. The poem's setting, then, brings the tragedy of war to its point of origin and reinforces the point that husband and wife--and, by extension, other citizens--are helpless in the face of their government's decisions.
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Literary and Historical Context of “A Wife in London”
Literary Context
Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 and became one of the most successful novelists of the Victorian era. His later novels—works like Jude the Obscure and Tess of the d'Urbervilles—challenged Victorian sensibilities, and the often-angry reaction to their publication led him to focus on poetry in his later years. This poem is dated December 1899 and is one of a number of anti-war poems Hardy wrote in response to the Boer War conflict. Other relevant anti-war poems of Hardy's include "Drummer Hodge," "The Souls of the Slain," "A Christmas Ghost-story." Other poets responded to the war in different ways. Rudyard Kipling, for example, wrote poetry that spoke bombastically about the British army's prospects. A.E. Housman's collection of poetry A Shropshire Lad is another important work within the context of the Boer War. Released in 1896, its popularity greatly increased with the advent of the war, as the book's themes of nostalgia, warfare, and patriotism struck a chord with the general public.
Historical Context
"A Wife in London" was written in response to the Boer War. This was a conflict that took place in what is now referred to as South Africa, and lasted from 1899-1902. It was euphemistically called "The Last of the Gentleman's Wars," but it was anything but—British forces fought with groups antagonistic to British rule, and total casualties amounted to 60,000 people. Hardy himself was suspicious of the Empire's involvement in the area, believing it to be in large part due to the rich resources of the land (especially gold). More recent scholarship has highlighted the controversial use of concentration camps by the British in the war. In fact, most of the more than 25,000 Afrikaners imprisoned in these camps died due to starvation and disease. The wider context of the Boer War is the Victorian era, during which the British Empire exerted far-reaching control over much of the globe. For some, this was a source of pride; others, like Hardy, were more critical.
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More “A Wife in London” Resources
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External Resources
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"A Wife in London" Reading — A reading of the poem by actor Richard Armitage.
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Boer War Poetry — Further poetry related to the Boer War.
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Radio Documentary — A radio documentary about Hardy's life and work.
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Hardy poetry commentaries — A valuable resource of Hardy poems and analyses, provided by The Thomas Hardy Society.
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Boer War Explanation — A BBC article that gives a clear account of the Boer War.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Thomas Hardy
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