The Title
There is irony in the title that will not become apparent until one has completed the poem. No character is named, the country where the war is going on is not directly identified nor is the war itself and there is absolutely no real reason to identify the home city of the wife in question. And yet there it is in the title: London. Kind of ironic that a poem devoted to constructing ambiguous universality should place so much emphasis on where it takes place and yet offer nothing within the text to suggest why this story could not quite literally take place in any other city on the planet.
The Letter
That wife in London receives a telegram informing her of her husband’s death on the battlefield. The very next day she receives a letter he obviously had written some time earlier that is filled with the excitement of making plans for when he gets home. That is the very definition of modern irony.
December in Victorian London
The only other occasion of quite precise specificity about this story apart from taking place in London is when it takes place: December 1899. The last month of the last year of the 19th century (technically, the year before the last year of the century, but let’s not get boiled down in that), but even more importantly, Christmas time in Victorian England. The era that essentially shaped the modern way view of what Christmas should look like: gaiety in the snow. Instead, this London is gloomy and oppressive and in place of pure white snow is a mustard-yellowish brown smog. Hardy may have been aiming for a statement of hope that the twentieth century would not keep making the mistakes of all which preceded, but the irony now is fully situated in the complete absence of a London that looks like what movies have convinced us December in the Victorian Era looked like.
The Letter, Part II
When the postman brings the letter written in the hand of the husband—a hand that “the worm now knows”—it is accompanied by the only imagery anywhere in the poem that bears even the slightest resemblance to those picture postcard memories of Victorian Christmas. An alliterative “firelight flicker” accompanies the reading of that letter which is effusive and overflowing with excitement and hope. It is the setting for a joyous occasion: reading a loving letter from a husband far away by the glow of a warm fireplace. And yet it is the saddest moment in the woman’s short life.
The End
The poem draws to a conclusion with more upbeat imagery derived from the letter of the dead husband:
“In the summer weather,
And of new love that they would learn.”
He writes of summer warmth which she reads amidst desolate December cold. And he writes of dreaming of their love becoming brand new all over again as they grow old and learn about each other. A state of being that is never going to happen now. This is irony on a tragic level.
