Public official, newspaper editor. B. A. Cambridge, 1851; M. A., 1854. Admitted at Inner Temple, 1848; called to the bar, 1852. Practised for some years as equity draftsman and conveyancer. Stood as Conservative candidate for East Surrey, 1868. Chairman (unpaid) of Surrey Quarter Sessions, 1865-90 ("Preface”, A Mid-Victorian Pepys, ed. Ellis); recorder of Kingston-on-Thames, 1875-1890. Served as alderman of Surrey County Council; mayor of Kingston-on-Thames, 1870. Knighted, 1885, for his long public service. Contributed an occasional article to periodicals. Editor, 1872-1890, of Morning Post. Edited and published John McDouall Stuart's Explorations in Australia, 1864. F.R.G.S.

Hardman had a wide circle of friends—among them, in particular, Shirley Brooks and George Meredith. He was no friend of Dickens. On the occasion of one of Dickens’s resignations from the Garrick Club, Hardman noted that the Garrick would undoubtedly "survive the terrible blow" (A Mid-Victorian Pepys, p. 81). Dickens's wife was a friend of the Hardmans, at times a guest at their London home. Dickens's treatment of her seemed to them shameful. Particularly Dickens's failure to communicate with Mrs. Dickens at the time of the death of their son WaIter seemed to Hardman shabby and unforgiveable conduct: "If anything were wanting to sink Charles Dickens to the lowest depth of my esteem, this fills up the measure of his iniquity. As a writer, I admire him; as a man, I despise him” (Letters and Memoirs, ed. Ellis, p. 148).

The article that the Office Book assigns to Hardman is a discussion of a fourteenth-century cookery-book—a subject in line with Hardman's connoisseurship in matters of food and drink. A Mid- Victorian Pepys, p. 190n, credits the article to William Hardman.

Author: Anne Lohrli; © University of Toronto Press, 1971.