It’s a wonderful scene. Realism meets romanticism. Hardy’s short stories demonstrate that he was by nature a slightly acerbic observer of humanity with perhaps a zero-sum view of existence. And I can’t get past the interminable narrative descriptions in his longer novels. But FFTMC, since he merely wrote it for money, took him outside of himself.

Anyway, SL’s comment gives rise to the question of where and why the phrase “in clover” came about. Something to do with ruminants’ sheer drugged and stupefied exuberance, even on the verge of death? Young love, in green fields dotted with red and white, on the verge of Shakespearean “dying”? Bee’s honey?

Van Morrison - Blue Money Lyrics

Photographer smile
Take a break for a while
Take a rest, do your very best
Take five, honey
Five, honey

Search in your bag
Light up a fag
Think it’s a drag, but you’re so glad
To be alive, honey
Alive, honey

Say, when this is all over
You’ll be in clover
We’ll go out and spend
All a your (blue money)
Blue money (blue money)

The OED quotes Dr. Johnson’s explanation: “to live (or be) in clover: ‘to live luxuriously; clover being extremely delicious and fattening to cattle’.”

In recognition of the direction that this thread is taking should it not be renamed “Bring on the Clams”?

And, as further proof of our academic integrity, we ought to establish whether Mr Gorsky’s first name was “Larry,” even though he wasn’t an Australian.

Surely that should be “Send in the Clams.”

From the musical, A Little Night Mollusc.

By Wolfgang Architeuthis Mozart?

I tried to resist, really.