The American memorial to `Tess' Thomas Hardy, just unveiled at Dorchester, would never have materialised if all American readers had taken the view of the novelist's work that one of them expressed to his face. Mrs Louise Chandler Moulton, an American poet, records a scene at a London dinner party at which Hardy was present shortly after the publication of "Tess". The much discussed novel dominated the conversation, until a little American woman leaned across to the novelist and said, in a clear penetrating voice that commanded everyone's attention: "These folk, Mr Hardy, are complaining that you had Tess hanged in the last chapter of your book. That is not what I complain of. I complain because you did not have all your characters hanged; for they all deserved it." Her tone suggested that she would have executed the author along with his creations.
The Irish Times, April 24th, 1931.