Far from the Madding Crowd keep his appointment with Fanny. Seeing the reason for her failure to meet him, he gently kisses the corpse and tells the anguished Bathsheba, "This woman is more to me, dead as she is, than ever you were, or are, or can be". The next day he spends all his money on a marble tombstone with the inscription: "Erected by Francis Troy in beloved memory of Fanny Robin ..." Then, loathing himself and unable to bear Bathsheba's company, he leaves. After a long walk he bathes in the sea, leaving his clothes on the beach. A strong current carries him
The Woodlanders gossip (but not before Tangs tries to injure Fitzpiers with a man trap) The Woodlanders also contains many poetic descriptions on the natural world, the countryside and the changing seasons. Florence Emily Hardy, his second wife, recorded that in 1874 Hardy "put aside a woodland story", which ten years later evolved into "The Woodlanders". It was intended to be the successor to his 1874 "Far from the Madding Crowd", but he laid the novel aside to work on other things. Hardy eventually decided to return to his "woodland story" after the editor of "Macmillan's Magazine" asked for a new serial