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diff --git a/46801-h/46801-h.htm b/46801-h/46801-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..27e8c99 --- /dev/null +++ b/46801-h/46801-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,11242 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>The Hardy Country, by Charles G. Harper</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;} + P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; } + .GutSmall { font-size: 0.7em; } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4, H5 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + table { border-collapse: collapse; } +table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} + td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} + td p { margin: 0.2em; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-weight: normal; + color: gray; + } + img { border: none; } + img.dc { float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; } + p.gutindent { margin-left: 2em; } + div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; } + div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 100%; border-top: 1px solid;} + div.gapmediumline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + div.gapmediumdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; + margin-left: 40%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid; } + div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%; + margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; margin-left:40%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + img.floatleft { float: left; + margin-right: 1em; + margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.floatright { float: right; + margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.clearcenter {display: block; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em} + --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Hardy Country, by Charles G. Harper + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most +other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of +the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + + + +Title: The Hardy Country + Literary landmarks of the Wessex Novels + + +Author: Charles G. Harper + + + +Release Date: September 7, 2014 [eBook #46801] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HARDY COUNTRY*** +</pre> +<p>This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/fp.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Weymouth: St. Mary Street and statue of George III." +title= +"Weymouth: St. Mary Street and statue of George III." + src="images/fp.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<h1><span class="GutSmall">THE</span><br /> +HARDY COUNTRY</h1> +<p style="text-align: center">LITERARY LANDMARKS OF<br /> +THE WESSEX +NOVELS</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">BY</span><br +/> +CHARLES G. HARPER<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">AUTHOR OF “THE INGOLDSBY +COUNTRY,” ETC.</span></p> +<blockquote><p>“Here shepherds pipe their rustic song,<br +/> +Their flocks and rural nymphs among.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/tp.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Medallion" +title= +"Medallion" + src="images/tp.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>ILLUSTRATED BY THE +AUTHOR</i></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center">LONDON<br /> +ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK</p> +<p style="text-align: center">1904</p> +<h2><a name="pagev"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +v</span><i>PREFACE</i></h2> +<p><i>Dorsetshire</i>, <i>the centre of the</i> “<i>Hardy +Country</i>,” <i>the home of the Wessex Novels</i>, <i>is a +land literally flowing with milk and honey</i>: <i>a land of +great dairies</i>, <i>of flowers and bees</i>, <i>of rural +industries</i>, <i>where rustic ways and speech and habits of +thought live long</i>, <i>and the kindlier virtues are not +forgotten in such stress of life as prevails in towns</i>: <i>a +land desirable for its own sweet self</i>, <i>where you may see +the beehives in cottage gardens and therefrom deduce that honey +of which I have spoken</i>, <i>and where that flow of milk is no +figure of speech</i>. <i>You may indeed hear the swish of +it in the milking pails at almost every turn of every +lane</i>.</p> +<p><i>Thatch survives in every village</i>, <i>as nowhere +else</i>, <i>and here quaint towns maintain their quaintness at +all odds</i>, <i>while elsewhere foolish folk seek to be—as +they phrase it</i>—“<i>up to date</i>.” +<i>It is good</i>, <i>you think</i>, <i>who explore these +parts</i>, <i>to be out of date and reckless of all the tiresome +worries of modernity</i>.</p> +<p><i>Spring is good in Dorset</i>, <i>summer better</i>, +<i>autumn—when the kindly fruits of the earth are +ingathered and </i><a name="pagevi"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +vi</span><i>the smell of pomace is sweet in the mellow +air—best</i>. <i>Winter</i>? <i>Well</i>, +<i>frankly</i>, <i>I don’t know</i>.</p> +<p><i>To all these natural advantages has been added in our +generation the romantic interest of Mr. Thomas Hardy’s +novels of rural life and character</i>, <i>in which real places +are introduced with a lavish hand</i>. <i>The identity of +those places is easily resolved</i>; <i>and</i>, <i>that feat +performed</i>, <i>there is that compelling force in his genius +which inevitably</i>, <i>sooner or later</i>, <i>magnetically +draws those who have read</i>, <i>to see for themselves what +manner of places and what folk they must be in real life</i>, +<i>from whose characteristics such poignant tragedy</i>, <i>such +suave and admirable comedy</i>, <i>have been evolved</i>. +<i>I have many a time explored Egdon</i>, <i>and observed the +justness of the novelist’s description of that sullen +waste</i>: <i>have traversed Blackmoor Vale</i>, <i>where</i> +“<i>the fields are never brown and the springs never +dry</i>,” <i>but where the roads—it is a +cyclist’s criticism—are always shockingly bad</i>: +<i>in fine</i>, <i>have visited every literary landmark of the +Wessex Novels</i>. <i>If I have not found the rustics so +sprack-witted as they are in</i> <span class="smcap">The Return +of the Native</span> <i>and other stories—why</i>, <i>I +never expected so to find them</i>, <i>for I did not imagine the +novelist to be a reporter</i>. <i>But—this is in +testimony to the essential likeness to life of his women—I +know</i> “<i>Bathsheba</i>”; <i>only she is not a +farmer</i>, <i>nor in</i> “<i>Do’set</i>,” +<i>and I have met</i> “<i>Viviette</i>” <i>and</i> +“<i>Fancy</i>.” <i>They were called by other +names</i>, <i>’tis true</i>; <i>but they were</i>, <i>and +are</i>, <i>those distracting characters come to life</i>.</p> +<p><a name="pagevii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. vii</span><i>A +word in conclusion</i>. <i>No attempt has here been made to +solemnly</i> “<i>expound</i>” <i>the +novelist</i>. <i>He</i>, <i>I take it</i>, <i>expounds +himself</i>. <i>Nor has it been thought necessary to +exclude places simply for the reason that they by some chance do +not find mention in the novels</i>. <i>These pages are</i>, +<i>in short</i>, <i>just an attempt to record impressions +received of a peculiarly beautiful and stimulating literary +country</i>, <i>and seek merely to reflect some of the joy of the +explorer and the enthusiasm of an ardent admirer of the +novelist</i>, <i>who here has given tongues to trees and a voice +to every wind</i>.</p> +<p style="text-align: right">CHARLES G. HARPER.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Petersham</span>, <span +class="smcap">Surrey</span>,<br /> + <i>July</i> 1904.</p> +<h2><a name="pageix"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +ix</span>CONTENTS</h2> +<table> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="GutSmall">CHAP.</span></p> +</td> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">PAGE</span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">I.</p> +</td> +<td><p>PRELIMINARIES: THE HARDY COUNTRY DEFINED; FAWLEY MAGNA; +OXFORD</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page1">1</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">II.</p> +</td> +<td><p>WINCHESTER: THE ANCIENT CAPITAL OF WESSEX</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page9">9</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">III.</p> +</td> +<td><p>WINCHESTER TO STOCKBRIDGE AND WEYHILL</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page16">16</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">IV.</p> +</td> +<td><p>STOCKBRIDGE TO SALISBURY AND STONEHENGE</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page26">26</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">V.</p> +</td> +<td><p>THE OLD COACH-ROAD: SALISBURY TO BLANDFORD</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page35">35</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">VI.</p> +</td> +<td><p>THE OLD COACH-ROAD: BLANDFORD TO DORCHESTER</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page47">47</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">VII.</p> +</td> +<td><p>DORCHESTER</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page62">62</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">VIII.</p> +</td> +<td><p>DORCHESTER (<i>continued</i>)</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page74">74</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><a name="pagex"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. x</span>IX.</p> +</td> +<td><p>SWANAGE</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page84">84</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">X.</p> +</td> +<td><p>SWANAGE TO CORFE CASTLE</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page92">92</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">XI.</p> +</td> +<td><p>CORFE CASTLE</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page105">105</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">XII.</p> +</td> +<td><p>WAREHAM</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page114">114</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">XIII.</p> +</td> +<td><p>WAREHAM TO WOOL AND BERE REGIS</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page122">122</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">XIV.</p> +</td> +<td><p>BERE REGIS</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page133">133</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">XV.</p> +</td> +<td><p>THE HEART OF THE HARDY COUNTRY</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page148">148</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">XVI.</p> +</td> +<td><p>DORCHESTER TO CROSS-IN-HAND, MELBURY, AND YEOVIL</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page168">168</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">XVII.</p> +</td> +<td><p>SHERBORNE</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page178">178</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">XVIII.</p> +</td> +<td><p>SHERBORNE TO CERNE ABBAS AND WEYMOUTH</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page191">191</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">XIX.</p> +</td> +<td><p>SHERBORNE TO CERNE ABBAS AND WEYMOUTH +(<i>continued</i>)</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page205">205</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">XX.</p> +</td> +<td><p>WEYMOUTH</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page214">214</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">XXI.</p> +</td> +<td><p>THE ISLE OF PORTLAND</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page222">222</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">XXII.</p> +</td> +<td><p>WEYMOUTH TO BRIDPORT AND BEAMINSTER</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page232">232</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">XXIII.</p> +</td> +<td><p>WEYMOUTH TO LULWORTH COVE</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page246">246</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><a name="pagexi"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. xi</span>XXIV.</p> +</td> +<td><p>BOURNEMOUTH TO POOLE</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page257">257</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">XXV.</p> +</td> +<td><p>WIMBORNE MINSTER</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page270">270</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">XXVI.</p> +</td> +<td><p>WIMBORNE MINSTER TO SHAFTESBURY</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page277">277</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">XXVII.</p> +</td> +<td><p>WIMBORNE MINSTER TO SHAFTESBURY (<i>continued</i>)</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page288">288</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">XXVIII.</p> +</td> +<td><p>WIMBORNE MINSTER TO HORTON AND MONMOUTH ASH</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page297">297</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">XXIX.</p> +</td> +<td><p>OVER THE HILLS, BEYOND THE RAINBOW</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page302">302</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p>INDEX</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page313">313</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +</table> +<h2><a name="pagexiii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +xiii</span>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2> +<table> +<tr> +<td><p>Weymouth: St. Mary Street and Statue of George III.</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><i>Frontispiece</i></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Fawley Magna</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image3">3</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>High Street, Oxford, <i>Facing</i></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image4">4</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>High Street, Winchester</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image11">11</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Winchester Cathedral, <i>Facing</i></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image14">14</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Weyhill Fair</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image24">24</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Salisbury Cathedral</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image30">30</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Stonehenge</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image32">32</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Pentridge</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image36">36</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Eastbury</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image41">41</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Blandford Forum</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image45">45</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Old Manor-House, Milborne St. Andrew</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image49">49</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Weatherbury Castle</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image50">50</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Obelisk, Weatherbury Castle</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image51">51</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Piddletown</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image55">55</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>A Quaint Corner in Piddletown</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image57">57</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Lower Walterstone Farm; Original of +“Bathsheba’s Farm” in <i>Far from the Madding +Crowd</i></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image59">59</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Ten Hatches, Dorchester</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image69">69</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Dorchester Gaol</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image75">75</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Hangman’s Cottage, Dorchester</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image77">77</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Colyton House, Dorchester</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image79">79</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Old Church, Swanage</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image89">89</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Encombe</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image95">95</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Corfe Castle</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image99">99</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Corfe Castle, <i>Facing</i></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page106">106</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Approach to Wareham: The Walls of Wareham</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image116">116</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Wareham</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image119">119</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Abbot’s Coffin, Bindon Abbey</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image123">123</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Woolbridge House</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image125">125</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Woolbridge House: Entrance Front</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image127">127</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Gallows Hill, Egdon Heath, <i>Facing</i></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image128">128</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Chamberlain’s Bridge</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image130">130</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Rye Hill, Bere Regis</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image131">131</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Bere Regis</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image135">135</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Bere Regis</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image137">137</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Bere Regis: Interior of Church</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image141">141</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>“Toothache,” Bere Regis</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image143">143</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>“Headache,” Bere Regis</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image143">143</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Bere Regis: The Turberville Window</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image145">145</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Stinsford Church; the “Mellstock” of <i>Under +the Greenwood Tree</i></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image149">149</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Birthplace of Thomas Hardy</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image158">158</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Birthplace of Thomas Hardy</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image159">159</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Duck Inn, Original of the “Quiet Woman” +Inn in <i>The Return of the Native</i></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image161">161</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Tincleton</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image163">163</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>An Egdon Farmstead</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image165">165</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>A Farm on Egdon</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image166">166</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Cross-in-Hand, <i>Facing</i></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image170">170</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Batcombe</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image171">171</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Tomb of “Conjuring Minterne”</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image173">173</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Melbury House, <i>Facing</i></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image174">174</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><a name="pagexv"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +xv</span>Sherborne Abbey Church, <i>Facing</i></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image184">184</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Long Burton</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image192">192</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Holnest: the Drax Mausoleum</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image194">194</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Dungeon Hill and the Vale of Blackmore</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image195">195</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Cerne Abbas</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image201">201</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Gatehouse, Cerne Abbey, <i>Facing</i></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image202">202</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Cerne Giant</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image203">203</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Cerne Abbas</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image206">206</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Wolveton House</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image207">207</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Weymouth and Portland from the Ridgeway</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image209">209</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Wishing Well, Upwey</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image211">211</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Weymouth Harbour</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image219">219</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Sandsfoot Castle</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image223">223</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Bow and Arrow Castle</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image229">229</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Portisham</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image233">233</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Road out of Abbotsbury</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image235">235</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Sheep-Shearing in Wessex, <i>Facing</i></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image236">236</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>West Bay, Bridport</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image239">239</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>High Street and Town Hall, Bridport</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image243">243</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Sutton Poyntz: the “Overcombe” of <i>The +Trumpet Major</i></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image247">247</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Bincombe</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image249">249</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Poxwell Manor</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image251">251</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Owermoigne: the Smugglers’ Haunt in <i>The +Distracted Preacher</i></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image253">253</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Lulworth Cove</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image254">254</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Lulworth Cove</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image255">255</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Lytchett Heath: The Equestrian Effigy of George III.: +Entrance to Charborough Park, <i>Facing</i></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image256">256</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Bournemouth: The Invalids’ Walk</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image258">258</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Poole Quay</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image267">267</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Sturminster Marshall: Anthony Etricke’s Tomb, +Wimborne Minster, <i>Facing</i></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image270">270</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Wimborne Clock Jack</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image273">273</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Wimborne Minster: the Minster and the Grammar School, +<i>Facing</i></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image274">274</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Tower, Charborough Park</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image281">281</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Weather-vane at Shapwick: the “Shapwick +Monster”</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image283">283</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Maypole, Shillingstone</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image285">285</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Sturminster Newton: The White Hart Inn</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image286">286</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Marnhull</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image289">289</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Gold Hill, Shaftesbury</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image295">295</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Observatory, Horton, <i>Facing</i></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image298">298</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Horton Inn: the “Lorton Inn” of <i>Barbara of +the House of Grebe</i></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image299">299</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Monmouth Ash</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image300">300</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Bingham’s Melcombe</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image303">303</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Milton Abbas, <i>Facing</i></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image306">306</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Milton Abbas, an Early “Model” Village</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image307">307</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Abbot Milton’s Rebus, Milton Abbey</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image309">309</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Milton Abbey</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image310">310</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Turnworth House</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="imageref"><a +href="#image311">311</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +</table> +<h2><a name="page1"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 1</span>CHAPTER +I</h2> +<p style="text-align: center" class="gutsumm">PRELIMINARIES: THE +HARDY COUNTRY DEFINED; FAWLEY MAGNA; OXFORD</p> +<p><span class="smcap">In</span> the literary partition of +England, wherein the pilgrim may discover tracts definitely and +indissolubly dedicated to Dickens, to Tennyson, to Ingoldsby, and +many another, no province has been so thoroughly annexed or so +effectively occupied as that associated with the Wessex novels +written by Mr. Thomas Hardy. He holds Wessex in fee-simple, +to the exclusion of all others; and so richly topographical are +all those romances, that long ere sketch-maps showing his +literary occupancy of it were prepared and published in the +uniform edition of his works, there were those to whom the +identity of most of his scenes offered no manner of doubt. +By the circumstances of birth and of lifelong residence, the +“Wessex” of the novels has come to denote chiefly his +native county of Dorset, and in especial the neighbourhood of +Dorchester, the county town; but Mr. Hardy was early an +expansionist, and his outposts were long ago thrown forward, to +at last make his <a name="page2"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +2</span>Wessex in the domain of letters almost coterminous with +that ancient kingdom of Saxon times, which included all England +south of the Thames and west of Sussex, with the exception of +Cornwall. The very excellent sketch-map prepared for the +definitive edition of Mr. Hardy’s works very clearly shows +the comparative density of the literary settlements he has +made. Glancing at it, you at once perceive that what he +chooses to term “South Wessex”—named in merely +matter-of-fact gazetteers Dorsetshire—is thickly studded +with names of his own mintage, unknown to guidebook or ordnance +map, and presently observe that the surrounding divisions of +Upper, North, Mid, Outer, and Lower Wessex—as who should +say Hampshire, Berkshire, Wilts, Somerset, and Devon—are, +to follow the simile already adopted, barely colonised.</p> +<p>His nearest frontier-post towards London is Castle Royal, to +be identified with none other than Windsor; while near by are +Gaymead (Theale), Aldbrickham (Reading), and Kennetbridge +(Newbury). In the midst of that same division of North +Wessex, or Berkshire, are marked Alfredston and Marygreen, +respectively the little town of Wantage, birthplace of Alfred the +Great, and the small village of Fawley Magna, placed on the +draughty skyline of the bare and shivery Berkshire downs.</p> +<p>Then, near the eastern border of Upper Wessex is Quartershot, +or Aldershot, and farther within its confines Stoke-Barehills, by +which name Basingstoke and the unclothed uplands partly +surrounding it are indicated. Its “gaunt, +unattractive, ancient church” is accurately imaged in a +phrase, and it is just as true that the most familiar object of +the <a name="page3"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 3</span>place is +“its cemetery, standing among some picturesque +mediæval ruins beside the railway”; for indeed +Basingstoke cemetery and the fine ruins of the chapel once +belonging to the religious who, piously by intent, but rather +blasphemously to shocked ears, styled themselves the +“Brotherhood of the Holy Ghost,” stand immediately +without the railway station. At Stoke-Barehills, Jude and +Sue, visiting the Agricultural Show, were observed by Arabella, +Jude’s sometime wife, with some jealousy.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image3" href="images/p3.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Fawley Magna" +title= +"Fawley Magna" + src="images/p3.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Finally, northernmost of all these transfigured outer +landmarks, is Christminster, the university town and city of +Oxford, whose literary name in these pages derives from the +cathedral of Christ <a name="page4"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +4</span>there. This remote corner of his kingdom is +especially and solely devoted to the grievous story of <i>Jude +the Obscure</i>, a pitiful tale of frustrated ambition, +originally published serially in <i>Harper’s Magazine</i>, +under the much more captivating, if less descriptive, title of +<i>Hearts Insurgent</i>. The story opens at Fawley Magna, +to whose identity a clue is found in the name of Fawley given the +unhappy Jude. The village, we are told, was “as +old-fashioned as it was small, and it rested in the lap of an +upland adjoining the undulating North Wessex downs. Old as +it was, however, the well-shaft was probably the only relic of +the local history that remained absolutely unchanged. . . . +Above all, the original church, hump-backed, wood-turreted and +quaintly hipped, had been taken down, and either cracked up into +heaps of road-metal in the lane, or utilised as pigsty walls, +garden-seats, guard-stones to fences, and rockeries in the +flower-beds of the neighbourhood. In place of it a tall new +building of German-Gothic design, unfamiliar to English eyes, had +been erected on a new piece of ground by a certain obliterator of +historic records who had run down from London and back in a +day.” Who was that obliterator thus held up to +satire? Inquiries prove the church to have been rebuilt in +1866, and its architect to have been none other than G. E. +Street, R.A., than whom the middle Victorian period had no more +accomplished architect. Truly enough, its design is +something alien, but candour compels the admission that, however +detached from local traditions, it is really a very fine +building, and its designer quite undeserving of so slighting a +notice.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image4" href="images/p4.jpg"> +<img alt= +"High Street, Oxford" +title= +"High Street, Oxford" + src="images/p4.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p><a name="page5"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 5</span>From +Fawley the scene of Jude’s tragedy changes to +Christminster, the Oxford of everyday commerce. Oft had he, +as a boy, seen from this vantage-point the faint radiance of its +lights reflected from the sky at night, twenty miles away. +His anticipations and disillusionments, his strong resolves and +stumblings by the way, over stumbling-blocks of his own and of +extraneous making, picture a strong character brought low, like +Samson by Delilah—cheated of scholarly ambition by the +guardians of learning, who open its gates only to wealth or +scholarships acquired by early opportunity. Take <i>Jude +the Obscure</i> as you will, it forms a somewhat serious +indictment of university procedure: “They raise +pa’sons there, like radishes in a bed. ’Tis all +learning there—nothing but learning, except +religion.” Jude sought learning there, and Holy +Orders, but never rose beyond his trade of stonemason, and, after +many fitful wanderings through Wessex, ends tragically at +Oxford.</p> +<p>Since <i>Jude the Obscure</i> was written Oxford has gained +another historic personality, none the less real than the great +figures of actual life who have trodden the pavements of its High +Street. You may follow all the innermost thoughts of that +mere character in a novel, and see fully exposed the springs that +produce his actions; and thus he is made seem more human than all +your Wolseys and great dignitaries, whose doings, smothered in +dust, and whose motives, buried deep beneath their own +subterfuges and the dark imaginings of historians with little but +ancient verbiage to rely upon, seem only the spasmodic, +involuntary capers of so many irresponsible jumping-jacks. +Nowadays, when I <a name="page6"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +6</span>think of Oxford, it is to recall poor Jude Fawley’s +fascination by it, like the desire of the moth for the star, or +for the candle that eventually scorches its wings and leaves it +maimed and dying. “It is a city of light,” he +exclaimed, not knowing (as how should he have known?) that the +light it emits is but the phosphorescent glow of decay. And +when I walk the High Street, “the main street—that +ha’n’t another like it in the world,” it is not +of Newman or his fellow Tractarians I think, but of Jude the +stonemason, feeling with appreciative technical fingers the +mouldings and crumbling stones of its architecture.</p> +<p>In one novel, <i>A Pair of Blue Eyes</i>, Mr. Hardy has made +an expedition far beyond the confines of his Wessex. Away +beyond “Lower Wessex,” or Devonshire—itself +scarce more than incidentally referred to in the whole course of +his writings—he takes the reader to the north coast of +Cornwall, the “furthest westward of all those convenient +corners wherein I have ventured to erect my theatre for these +imperfect little dramas of country life and passions; and it lies +near to, or no great way beyond, the vague border of the Wessex +kingdom, on that side which, like the westering verge of modern +American settlements, was progressive and uncertain.”</p> +<p>“Castle Boterel” he styles the stage of his +tragical story of <i>A Pair of Blue Eyes</i>; a place to be found +on maps under the style and title of Boscastle. That tiny +port and harbour on the wildest part of a wild coast obtains its +name, in a manner familiar to all students of Cornish topography, +by a series of phonetic corruptions. Originally the site of +a castle owned by the Norman family of De Bottreaux, <a +name="page7"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 7</span>its name has in +the course of centuries descended from that knightly designation +to that it now bears. Leland, four hundred years ago, +described the place as “a very filthy Toun and il +kept,” and probably had still in mind and in nostrils when +he wrote the scent of the fish-cellars and the fish-offal which +to this day go largely towards making up the bouquet of most of +the smaller Cornish fishing-ports.</p> +<p>Still, as in Leland’s time, goes the little brook, +running down from the tremendously hilly background “into +the Severn Se betwixt 2 Hylles,” and still the harbour +remains, from the mariner’s point of view, “a pore +Havenet, of no certaine Salvegarde,” winding, as it does, +in the shape of a double S, between gigantic rocky headlands, and +most difficult of approach or exit. It will thus be +guessed, and guessed rightly, that, although poor as a harbour, +Boscastle is a place of commanding picturesqueness. Its +Cornish atmosphere, too, confers upon it another +distinction. In the romantic mind of the novelist the +district is “pre-eminently (for one person at least) the +region of dream and mystery. The ghostly birds, the +pall-like sea, the frothy wind, the eternal soliloquy of the +waters, the bloom, of dark purple cast, that seems to exhale from +the shoreward precipices, in themselves lend to the scene an +atmosphere like the twilight of a night vision.”</p> +<p>But it is not always like that at Boscastle. There are +days of bright sunshine, when the sea is in colour something +between a sapphire and an opal, when the cliffs reveal unexpected +hues and the sands of Trebarrow—the “Trebarwith +Strand” of the novel—shine golden, in contrast with +the dark <a name="page8"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +8</span>slaty headland of Willapark Point—the “cliff +without a name” where Elfride, the owner of that pair of +blue eyes, saves the prig, Henry Knight, by the singular +expedient none other than the author of the Wessex novels would +have conceived. The average reader may perhaps be allowed +his opinion that it had been better for Elfride had she saved her +underclothing and allowed Knight to drop from his precarious +hand-hold on the cliff’s edge into the sea below waiting +for him.</p> +<p>The town of “St. Launce’s” mentioned in the +book is of course Launceston, and “Endelstow” is the +village of St. Juliot’s.</p> +<h2><a name="page9"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 9</span>CHAPTER +II</h2> +<p style="text-align: center" class="gutsumm">WINCHESTER: THE +ANCIENT CAPITAL OF WESSEX</p> +<p><span class="smcap">But</span>, to have done with these +preliminary triflings in the marches of the Hardy Country, let us +consider in what way the Londoner may best come to a +thoroughgoing exploration of this storied land. On all +counts—by force of easy access, and by its ancient +circumstance—Winchester is indicated. “The city +of Wintoncester, that fine old city, afore-time capital of +Wessex,” stands at the gate of this literary country and +hard by the confines of the New Forest, to which by tradition and +history it is closely akin. At one in feeling with that +hoary hunting preserve, it is itself modern in but little +measure, and loves to linger upon memories of the past. +Here the Saxon and the Norman are not merely historical counters +with which, to the ideas of unimaginative students, the dusty +game of history was played; but do, by the presence of their +works, make the least impressionable feel that they were +creatures of blood and fibre, strong to rule, to make and unmake +nations; groping darkly in superstition, without doubt, but +perceiving the light, distant and dim, and striving with all the +strength of their strong natures to win toward it. They +fought as sturdily for Christianity as they had <a +name="page10"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 10</span>done for +paganism, and were not—it really seems necessary to insist +upon it—creatures of parchment and the wax of which seals +are sealed; but lived as human a life as ourselves, and loved and +hated, and despaired and triumphed, just as keenly, nay, with +perhaps even greater keenness, than any Edwardian liege of this +twentieth century. Still runs the Itchen, bright and clear +as when the Romans came and the Saxons followed, to be in their +turn ousted in governance by the Norman-French; and still, +although this England of ours be yet overlorded by the relics of +Norman domination, it is the broad-shouldered, level-headed, +stolid, and long-suffering Saxon who peoples Winchester and +Wessex, and in him that ancient kingdom, although unknown to +modern political geographies, survives.</p> +<p>Sweet and gracious city, I love you for old association and +for your intrinsic worth, alike. Changing, although ever so +slowly, with the years, your developments make, not as elsewhere, +for black bitterness of heart and vain regrets for the things of +sweet savour and good report, swept away into the dustheaps and +potsherds of “progress,” but for content and happy +assent. In these later years, for example, it has occurred +to Winchester to honour Alfred, the great Wessex king, warrior +and lawgiver, born at Wantage, warring over all southern England, +ruling at Winchester, dead at Faringdon in <span +class="GutSmall">A.D.</span> 901, and buried here in a spot still +shown, in the long desecrated Hyde Abbey. That is a noble, +heroic-sized bronze effigy of him, erected in 1901, to +commemorate the millenary of this hero-king, and one in thorough +keeping with Winchester’s ancient dignity.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page11"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 11</span> +<a name="image11" href="images/p11.jpg"> +<img alt= +"High Street, Winchester" +title= +"High Street, Winchester" + src="images/p11.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p><a name="page12"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 12</span>Near +by, where its imposing bulk is reared up against the giant +background of St. Giles’s Hill, you may still see and hear +the Itchen rushing furiously under the old City Mill by Soke +Bridge, where dusty millers have ground corn for a thousand +years. Released from the mill-leat, the stream regains its +placid temper and wanders suavely along daisy-dappled meads to +St. Cross, and so at last to lose itself in Southampton Water; +still fishful all the way, as in the days of old Izaak Walton +himself, who lies in the south transept of the cathedral yonder, +and has a sanctified place in these liberal-minded times in a +tabernacle of the restored reredos, in the glorious company of +the apostles, the saints, kings and bishops, who form a very +mixed concourse in that remarkable structure. I fear that +if they were all brought to life and introduced to one another, +they would not form the happiest of families.</p> +<p>But that’s as may be. From this vantage-point by +King Alfred’s statue—or “Ælfred,” +as the inscription learnedly has it, to the confusion of the +unscholarly—you may see, as described in Tess, “the +sloping High Street, from the West Gateway to the mediæval +cross, and from the mediæval cross to the bridge”; +but you can only make out a portion of the squat, low Norman +tower of the cathedral itself; for here, instead of being +beckoned afar by lofty spire, you have to seek that ancient fane, +and, diligently inquiring, at last find it. Best it is to +come to the cathedral by way of that aforesaid mediæval +cross in the High Street, hard by the curiously overhanging +penthouse shops, and under a low-browed entry, <a +name="page13"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 13</span>which, to the +astonishment of the stranger, instead of conducting into a +backyard, brings one into the cathedral close, a lovely parklike +space of trim lawns, ancient lime avenues, and noble old +residences of cathedral dignitaries with nothing to do and +exceedingly good salaries for doing it. It has been +remarked, with an innocent, childlike wonder, that some sixty per +cent. of the famous men whose careers are included in the +<i>Dictionary of National Biography</i> were the sons of +clergymen. No wonder at all, I take it, in this, for it is +merely nature’s compensating swing of the pendulum. +The parents, living a life of repose, have been storing up energy +for the use of their offspring, and thus our greatest +empire-makers and men of action, and some of our greatest +scoundrels too, have derived from beneath the benignant shadow of +the Church.</p> +<p>That squat, heavy Norman tower just now spoken of has a +history to its squatness—a history bound up with the +tragical death of Rufus. The grave of the Red King in the +cathedral forms the colophon of a tragical story whose inner +history has never been, and never will be, fully explained; but +by all the signs and portents that preceded the ruthless +king’s death at Stoney Cross, where his heart was pierced +by the glanced arrow said to have been aimed at the wild red deer +by Walter Tyrrell, it should seem that the clergy were more +intimately connected with that “accident” than was +seemly, even in the revengeful and bloodstained ecclesiastics of +that time. It must not be forgotten that the king had +despoiled the Church and the Church’s high dignitaries with +a thorough and <a name="page14"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +14</span>comprehensive spoliation, nor can it be blinked that +certain of them had denounced him and prophesied disaster with an +exactness of imagery possible only to those who had prepared the +fulfilment of their boding prophecies. “Even +now,” said one, “the arrow of retribution is fixed, +the bow is stretched.” This was not metaphor, merely: +they prophesied who had with certainty prepared fulfilment. +And when the thing was consummated and the body of the Red King +was buried in the choir beneath the original central tower, the +ruin in which that tower fell, seven years later, was not, +according to clerical opinion, due to faulty construction and the +insufficient support given to its great crushing weight by the +inadequate pillars, but to the fact that one was buried beneath +who had not received the last rites of the Church. If +indeed that be so, the mills of God certainly do grind +slowly.</p> +<p>For the rest, the cathedral is the longest in England. +Longer than Ely, longer than St. Albans, it measures from east to +west no less than 556 feet. As we read in the story of +<i>Lady Mottisfont</i>, Wintoncester, among all the romantic +towns in Wessex, is for this reason “probably the most +convenient for meditative people to live in; since there you have +a cathedral with nave so long that it affords space in which to +walk and summon your remoter moods without continually turning on +your heel, or seeming to do more than take an afternoon stroll +under cover from the rain or sun. In an uninterrupted +course of nearly three hundred steps eastward, and again nearly +three hundred steps westward amid those magnificent tombs, you +can, <a name="page15"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 15</span>for +instance, compare in the most leisurely way the dry dustiness +which ultimately pervades the persons of kings and bishops with +the damper dustiness that is usually the final shape of +commoners, curates, and others who take their last rest +out-of-doors. Then, if you are in love, you can, by +sauntering in the chapels and behind the episcopal chantries with +the bright-eyed one, so steep and mellow your ecstasy in the +solemnities around that it will assume a rarer and fairer +tincture.”</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image14" href="images/p14.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Winchester Cathedral" +title= +"Winchester Cathedral" + src="images/p14.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>In the city the curfew bell still rings out from the old +Guildhall every evening at eight o’clock, the sentimental +survival of an old-time very real and earnest ordinance; the West +Gate remains in the wall, hard by the fragments of the royal +castle; down in the lower extremity of the city the +bishop’s palace and castle of Wolvesey rears its shattered, +ivy-covered walls: much in fine remains of Winchester’s +ancient state.</p> +<p>But now to make an end and to leave Winchester for +Salisbury.</p> +<h2><a name="page16"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +16</span>CHAPTER III</h2> +<p style="text-align: center" class="gutsumm">WINCHESTER TO +STOCKBRIDGE AND WEYHILL</p> +<p><span class="smcap">From</span> Wintoncester to +Melchester—that is to say, from Winchester to +Salisbury—is twenty-three miles if you go by way of +Stockbridge and Winterslow; if by the windings of the valley +roads by King’s Somborne and Mottisfont, anything you like, +from thirty upwards, for it is a devious route and a +puzzling. We will therefore take the highway and for the +present leave the byways severely alone.</p> +<p>The high road goes in an ascent, a white and dusty streak, +from Winchester to Stockbridge, the monotonous undulations of the +chalky downs relieved here and there on the skyline by distant +woods, and the wayside varied at infrequent intervals by +murmurous coppices of pines, in whose sullen depths the riotous +winds lose themselves in hollow undertones or absolute +silences. But before the traveller comes thus out into the +country, he must, emerging from the West Gate, win to the open +through the recent suburb of Fulflood; for “Winton” +as its natives lovingly name it, and as the old milestones on +this very road agree to style it, has after many years of slumber +waked to life again, and is growing. It is not a large nor +a bustling suburb, this recent fringe upon Winchester’s +ancient kirtle, <a name="page17"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +17</span>and you are soon out of it and breasting the slope of +Roebuck Hill. Here, looking back, the tragic outlines of +the prison, with grey-slated roof and ugly octagonal red-brick +tower, cut the horizon: an unlovely palimpsest set above the +mediæval graciousness of the ancient capital of all +England, but one that has become, in some sort, a literary +landmark in these later years, for it figures in the last scene +of <i>Tess of the D’Urbervilles</i>. In the last +chapter of that strenuous romance you shall read how from the +western gate of the city two persons walked on a certain morning +with bowed heads and gait of grief. They were Angel Clare, +the husband, and ’Liza-Lu, the sister of poor Tess, come to +witness the hoisting of the black flag upon the tower of that +inimical building. They witnessed this proof that +“‘Justice’ was done, and the President of the +Immortals (in Æschylean phrase) had ended his sport with +Tess,” not from this Stockbridge road, but from the first +milestone on the road to Romsey, whence the city may be seen +“as in an isometric drawing” set down in its vale of +Itchen, “the broad cathedral tower with its Norman windows +and immense length of aisle and nave, the spires of St. +Thomas’s, the pinnacled tower of the college, and, more to +the right, the tower and gables of the ancient hospice, where to +this day the pilgrim may receive his dole of bread and ale. +Behind the city swept the rotund upland of St. Catherine’s +Hill; further off, landscape beyond landscape, till the horizon +was lost in the radiance of the sun hanging above it.”</p> +<p>Turning away from the contemplation of these things, and +overpassing the crest of Roebuck Hill <a name="page18"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 18</span>and its sponsorial inn, the road dips +down suddenly into the tiny village of Weeke, whose name is +sometimes, with romantic mediævalism, spelled +“Wyke.” For myself, did I reside there, I would +certainly have my notepaper stamped “Wyke next +Winchester,” and find much satisfaction therein. Wyke +consists, when fully summed up, of a characteristic rural +Hampshire church, with little wooden belfry and walls of flint +and red brick, of some scattered farms and of a roadside pond, a +great prim red-bricked house of Georgian date, and a row of +pollard limes on a grassy bank overlooking the road.</p> +<p>And then? Then the road goes on, past more uplands, +divided into fields whose smooth convexity gives the appearance +of even greater size than they possess: every circumstance of +their featureless rotundity disclosed from the highway across the +sparse hedges, reduced by free use of the billhook to the +smallest semblance of a hedge, consistent with the preservation +of a boundary. Wayside trees are to seek, and the wayfarer +pants in summer for lack of shade, and in winter is chilled to +the bone, as the winds roam free across Worthy downs.</p> +<p>Such is the way up Harestock Hill; not so grim as perhaps this +description may convey, but really very beautiful in its sort, +with a few cottages topping the rise where a signpost points a +road to Littleton and Crawley, and where the white-topped +equatorial of an observatory serves to emphasise a wholly +unobstructed view over miles of sky. It is only from vast +skyfields such as this that one hears the song of the skylark on +those still summer days when the sky is of the intensest azure +blue and the bees are busy wherever <a name="page19"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 19</span>the farmer has left nooks for the +wild-flowers to grow. On such days the dark woods of +Lainston, crowning the distant ridge, lend a welcome shade. +Fortunately they are easy of access, for the road runs by them +and an inconspicuous stile leads directly into one of the +rook-haunted alleys of those romantic avenues with which the +place is criss-crossed. A slightly marked footpath through +undergrowth thickly spread with the desiccated leaves of autumns +past, where the hedgehog hides and squirrels and wild life of +every kind abound, leads by a crackling track of dried twigs and +the empty husks of last year’s beech-nuts to another stile +and across a byroad into another of the five grand avenues +leading to Lainston House, a romantically gloomy, but +architecturally very fine, late seventeenth-century mansion +embowered amid foliage, with a ruined manorial chapel close at +hand in a darkling corner amid the close-set mossy boles of the +trees. The spot would form an ideal setting for one of the +Wessex tales, and indeed has a part in a sufficiently queer story +in actual life. That tale is now historic—how +Walpole’s “Ælia Lælia Chudleigh” +was in 1745 privately married, in this now roofless chapel, to +Captain Hervey, a naval officer who afterwards succeeded to the +title of third Earl of Bristol. “Miss +Chudleigh,” however, she still continued to be at +Court. Twenty-five years later she was the heroine of a +bigamy case, having married, while her first husband was living, +Pierrepont, Duke of Kingston. This was that lively lady +who, Walpole tells us, “went to Ranelagh as Iphigenia, but +as naked as Andromeda.”</p> +<p><a name="page20"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 20</span>The +ruined chapel has long been in that condition. Its font +lies, broken and green with damp, on the grass, and the old +ledger-stones that cover the remains of Chudleighs and Dawleys, +successive owners of the manor, are cracked and defaced. +The “living” of Lainston is worth £60 per +annum, and goes with that of the neighbouring village of +Sparsholt, the vicar holding it by virtue of preaching here once +a year. Stress of weather occasionally obliges him to +perform this duty under the shelter of an umbrella, when his +congregation, like that of the saint who preached to the birds, +is composed chiefly of rooks and jackdaws. But their +responses are not always well timed, and the notes of the jackdaw +sound uncommonly like the scoffings of the ribald.</p> +<p>One emerges from Lainston woods only to perceive this to be a +district of many woodlands. Across the road is Northwood, +where, close by Eastman’s great school, are thick coppices +of hazels and undergrowths that the primroses and bluebells +love. In another direction lies Sparsholt. None may +tell what the “Spar” in the place-name of this or the +other Sparsholt in Berkshire means, but “holt” +signifies a wood; and thus we may perceive that the surroundings +must still wear very much the aspect they owned when the name was +conferred. Sparsholt has no guidebook +attractions—nothing but its old thatched cottages and quiet +surroundings to recommend it. But the fragrant scent of the +wood-smoke from cottage hearths is over all. You may see +its blue filmy wreaths curling upwards on still days, against the +dark background of foliage. It is a rustic fragrance never +forgotten, an aroma which, <a name="page21"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 21</span>go whithersoever you will, brings +back the sweet memory of days that were, and the sound of a voice +in more actual fashion than possible to the notes of a +well-remembered song, or the scent of a rose.</p> +<p>They are not woods of forest trees that beset this district, +but hillside tangles of scrub oaks, of hazels and alders, where +the wild-flowers make a continual glory in early spring. +There are the labyrinths of No Man’s Land, the intricacies +of Privet and Crab Wood, through whose bosquets run the +long-deserted Roman road from Winchester to Old Sarum, and the +nameless spinneys dotted everywhere about. Away on the +horizon you may perceive a monument, capping a hill. It is +no memorial of gallantries in war, but is the obelisk erected on +Farley Mount to the horse of a certain “Paulet St. +John,” which jumped with him into a chalk-pit twenty-five +feet deep, emerging, with his rider, unhurt. That was in +1733. An inscription tells how that wonderful animal was +afterwards entered for the Hunters’ Plate, under the name +of “Beware Chalk Pit,” at the races on Worthy downs, +and won it.</p> +<p>Continuing on to Stockbridge, whose race-meeting has recently +been abolished, the way grows grim indeed, with that Roman +grimness characteristic of all the Wessex chalky down +country. The road is long, and at times, when the sun is +setting and the landscape fades away in purple twilight, the +explorer becomes obsessed, against all reason, with the weird +notion that the many centuries of civilisation are but a dream +and the distant ages come back again. To this bareness the +pleasant little town of Stockbridge, situated delightfully in the +valley of the <a name="page22"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +22</span>Anton, is a gracious interlude. In its old +churchyard the curious may still see the whimsical epitaph to +John Bucket, landlord of the “King’s Head” inn, +who died, aged 67, in 1802:</p> +<blockquote><p>And is, alas! poor Bucket gone?<br /> +Farewell, convivial honest John.<br /> +Oft at the well, by fatal stroke<br /> +Buckets like pitchers must be broke.<br /> +In this same motley shifting scene,<br /> +How various have thy fortunes been.<br /> +Now lifting high, now sinking low,<br /> +To-day the brim would overflow.<br /> +Thy bounty then would all supply<br /> +To fill, and drink, and leave thee dry.<br /> +To-morrow sunk as in a well,<br /> +Content unseen with Truth to dwell.<br /> +But high or low, or wet or dry,<br /> +No rotten stave could malice spy.<br /> +Then rise, immortal Bucket, rise<br /> +And claim thy station in the skies;<br /> +Twixt Amphora and Pisces shine,<br /> +Still guarding Stockbridge with thy sign.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In 1715, when the poet Gay rode horseback to Exeter and wrote +a rhymed account of his journey for the Earl of Burlington, he +described Stockbridge in doleful dumps. Why? Because +for seven years there had been no election:</p> +<blockquote><p>Sad melancholy ev’ry visage wears;<br /> +What! no election come in seven long years!<br /> +Of all our race of Mayors, shall Snow alone<br /> +Be by Sir Richard’s dedication known?<br /> +Our streets no more with tides of ale shall float!<br /> +Nor cobblers feast three years upon one vote.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Some of this seems cryptic, but it is explained by the fact of +Sir Richard Steele having published, September 22nd, 1713, a +quarto pamphlet <a name="page23"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +23</span>entitled <i>The Importance of Dunkirk considered</i> . . +. <i>in a letter to the Bailiff of Stockbridge</i>, whose name +was John Snow. The number of voters at Stockbridge was then +about seventy, and its population chiefly cobblers. To say +it was a corrupt borough is merely to state what might be said of +almost every one at that time; but it seems to have been +especially notable, even above its corrupt fellows, for a +contemporary chronicler is found writing: “It is a very wet +town and the voters are wet too.” He then continues, +as one deploring the depreciation of securities, “The +ordinary price of a vote is £60, but better times may +come.” But when elections only came septennially, the +wet voters who subsisted three years upon one vote must have gone +dry, poor fellows, an unconscionable while.</p> +<p>Some ten miles north of Stockbridge, on the road past Andover, +and overlooking the valley of the Anton, is Weyhill, a Hardy +landmark of especial importance, for it is the point whence +starts that fine tale, <i>The Mayor of Casterbridge</i>, +described in its sub-title as “The Life and Death of a Man +of Character.” It is a pleasant country of soft +riverain features by which you who seek to make pilgrimage to +this spot shall fare, coming into the quiet, cheerful little +market-town of Andover, and thenceforward near by the villages +which owe their curiously feminine names to their baptismal +river, the Anton. There you shall find Abbot’s Ann +and Little Ann, and I daresay, if you seek long enough, Mary Ann +also. Weyhill, a hamlet in the parish of Penton Mewsey, is +a place—although to look at it, you might not <a +name="page24"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 24</span>suspect +so—of hoary antiquity, and its Fair—still famous, and +still the largest in England—old enough to be the subject +of comment in <i>Piers Plowman’s Vision</i>, in the +line:</p> +<blockquote><p>At Wy and at Wynchestre I went to ye fair.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Alas that such things should be! this old-time six-days’ +annual market is now reduced to four. It is held between +October 10th and 13th, and divided into the Sheep, Horse, Hops, +Cheese, Statute or Hiring, and Pleasure Fairs. On each of +these days the three miles’ stretch of road from Andover is +thronged with innumerable wayfarers and made unutterably dusty by +the cabs and flys and the dense flocks of sheep and cattle on +their way to the Fair ground.</p> +<p>There are quaint survivals at Weyhill Fair. An +umbrella-seller may still, with every recurrent year, be seen +selling the most bulgeous and antique umbrellas, some of them +almost archaic enough to belong to the days of Jonas Hanway, who +introduced the use of such things in the eighteenth century; and +unheard-of village industries display their produce to the +astonished gaze. Here, for example, you see an exhibit of +modern malt-shovels, together with the maker of them, the +“W. Choules from Penton” whose name is painted up +over his unassuming corner; and although the Londoner has +probably never heard of, and certainly never seen, malt-shovels, +the making of them is obviously still a living industry.</p> +<p>Greatly to the stranger’s surprise, Weyhill, although in +fact situated above the valley of the Anton, does not appear to +be situated on a hill at <a name="page25"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 25</span>all. The road to “Weydon +Priors,” by which name it figures in <i>The Mayor of +Casterbridge</i>, is indeed, as the novelist sufficiently hints, +of no very marked features. It is “a road neither +straight nor crooked, neither level nor hilly,” and at +times other than Fair-time is as quiet a country road—for a +high road—as you shall meet; and, except for that one week +in the year, Weyhill is as a derelict village. There, on a +grassy tableland, stand, deserted for fifty-one weeks out of +every fifty-two, the whitewashed booths and rows of sheds that +annually for a brief space do so strenuous a trade, and scarce a +human being comes into view. Even now, just as in the +beginning of the story, Weyhill does not grow: “Pulling +down is more the nater of Weydon.”</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image24" href="images/p24.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Weyhill Fair" +title= +"Weyhill Fair" + src="images/p24.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>It is on the last day of the old six-days’ Fair, in +1829, that the story opens, with a man and woman—the woman +carrying a child—walking along this dusty road. That +they were man and wife was, according to the novelist’s +sardonic humour, plain to see, for they carried along with them a +“stale familiarity, like a nimbus.” The man was +the hay-trusser, Michael Henchard, whose after rise to be Mayor +of Casterbridge and whose final fall are chronicled in the +story. This opening scene is merely in the nature of a +prologue, disclosing the itinerant hay-trusser seeking work, +coming to the Fair and there selling his wife for five guineas to +the only bidder, a sailor—the second chapter resuming the +march of events eighteen years later.</p> +<h2><a name="page26"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +26</span>CHAPTER IV</h2> +<p style="text-align: center" class="gutsumm">STOCKBRIDGE TO +SALISBURY AND STONEHENGE</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Returning</span> to Stockbridge, <i>en +route</i> for Salisbury, eight miles more of roads of the same +unchanging characteristics, but growing more plentifully carpeted +with crushed flints as we advance, bring us to Wiltshire and to a +junction with the Exeter Road from Andover at Lobcombe +Corner. In the neighbourhood are “the Wallops,” +as local parlance refers to a group of three villages, Over and +Nether Wallop, with the wayside settlement of Little (or Middle) +Wallop in between. It is this last-named to which Mr. Hardy +refers when he tells how the ruined and broken-hearted Mayor of +Casterbridge, fleeing from the scene of his vanished greatness +and resuming his early occupation of hay-trusser, became employed +at a “pastoral farm near the old western highway. . . +. He had chosen the neighbourhood of this artery from a +sense that, situated here, though at a distance of fifty miles, +he was virtually nearer to her whose welfare was so dear than he +would be at a roadless spot only half as remote.” +Dorchester, otherwise Casterbridge, is in fact just forty-nine +and a half miles distant, down this old Exeter Road.</p> +<p>In less than another mile on our westward way <a +name="page27"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 27</span>the sight of +a solitary house in all this apparently uninhabited wilderness +arouses speculations in the pilgrim’s +mind—speculations resolved on approach, when the sight of +the recently restored picture-sign of the “Pheasant,” +reared up on its posts on the short grass of the open down, +opposite its door, proclaims this to be the old coaching inn once +famed as “Winterslow Hut.” None ever spoke of +the inn in those days as the “Pheasant,” although +that was the sign of it, plainly to be seen; as “Winterslow +Hut” it was always known, and a more lonely, forbidding +place of seclusion from the haunts of man it would be difficult +to find. It was once, appropriately enough, the retreat of +a lonely, forbidding person—the self-selected place of +exile from society of Hazlitt, the essayist, who, parting from +his wife at the village of West Winterslow (whence the inn takes +its name of “Winterslow Hut”) two miles away, lived +here from 1819 to 1828. Here he wrote the essays on +“Persons one would wish to have seen,” and the much +less sociable essay, “On Living to One’s +Self”—an art he practised here to his own +satisfaction and the cheerful resignation of the many persons +with whom he quarrelled. And here he saw the Exeter Mail +and the stage-coaches go by, and must have found the place even +lonelier, in the intervals after their passing, than it seems now +that the Road, as an institution, is dead and the Rail conveys +the traffic to and from Salisbury and the west, some two miles +distant, across country hidden from view from this point beneath +the swelling shoulders of the unchanging downs.</p> +<p>Salisbury spire is soon seen, when the long drop <a +name="page28"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 28</span>into the +valley of the Wiltshire Avon, down Three Mile Hill, begins; its +slender spire, the tallest in England, thrusting its long +needle-point 404 feet into the blue, and oddly peering out from +the swooping sides of the downs, long before any suspicion of +Sarum itself—as the milestones style it—has occupied +the mind of the literary pilgrim.</p> +<p>Salisbury, like some bland and contented elderly spinster, +does not look its age. When you are told how Old Sarum was +abandoned, New Sarum founded, and everything recreated <i>ad +hoc</i> at the command of Bishop Poore, impelled thereto by a +vision, in the then customary way, you are so impressed with what +we are used to regard as such thoroughly “American” +proceedings that you forget, in the apparent modernity of such a +method, how very long ago all this was done. This great +change of site took place about 1220, and sixty years later the +great cathedral, remarkable and indeed unique among all our +cathedrals for being designed and built, from the laying of the +foundation stone to the roofing-in of the building, in +one—the Early English—style, was completed. It +was actually a century later that the spire itself was +finished.</p> +<p>Much of this seeming youthfulness of Salisbury is due to the +regularity of plan upon which the city is laid out, and to the +comparative breadth of its streets. To that phenomenally +simple-minded person, Tom Pinch, whose like certainly could never +have been met with outside the pages of <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i>, +Salisbury seemed “a very desperate sort of place; an +exceedingly wild and dissipated city.” Here we smile +superior, although it is true <a name="page29"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 29</span>that in his short story, <i>On the +Western Circuit</i>, Mr. Hardy presents Melchester, as he names +this fair city, as given over to blazing orgies in the progress +of Melchester Fair, with steam-trumpeting merry-go-rounds, +glamour and glitter, glancing young women no better than they +ought to be, and an amorous young barrister much worse than he +should have been. Granting the truth of this picture of +Melchester Fair, it is to be observed that this is but an +interlude in a twelvemonth’s programme of polished, +decorous, and well-ordered urbanity. Its character is more +truly portrayed in <i>Jude the Obscure</i>, where Sue Bridehead +having gone to the city, to enter the Training College in the +Close, her cousin Jude follows her. He found it “a +quiet and soothing place, almost entirely ecclesiastical in its +tone; a spot where worldly learning and intellectual smartness +had no establishment.” It was here he obtained work +at his trade of stonemason, labouring on the restoration of the +cathedral; here that Sue shocked his ecclesiastical and +mediæval bent, meeting his suggestion that they should sit +for a talk in the cathedral by the proposal that she would rather +wait in the railway station: “That’s the centre of +town life now—the cathedral has had its day!” +To his shocked interjection, “How modern you are!” +she replied defensively, “I am not modern, either. I +am more ancient than mediævalism, if you only knew”; +meaning thereby that she was enamoured of classicism and the old +pagans.</p> +<p>To Sue the cathedral was not unsympathetic merely by force of +that clear-cut regularity which impresses most beholders with a +sense of a splendid, <a name="page30"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 30</span>but cold, perfection. There are +those who compare this great fane with Tennyson’s Lady +Clara Vere de Vere:</p> +<blockquote><p>Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly +null,<br /> +Dead perfection, no more;</p> +</blockquote> +<p>but while those critics are critics only of design and carved +stones, who would welcome something in its regular features +paralleled by a tip-tilted nose in a human face, Sue was +obviously preoccupied by the sense that it, not alone among +cathedrals, has outlived the devotional needs that produced it, +and is little more than a magnificent museum of architectural +antiquities. That magnificence would be even more complete +and pronounced had not the egregious James Wyatt been let loose +upon the “restoration” of it, towards the close of +the eighteenth century, when he cast out and destroyed most of +its internal adornments, and pulled down and utterly obliterated +the beautiful detached bell tower, coeval with the cathedral +itself, which stood, away from it, on the north side.</p> +<p>It is perhaps worthy of remark that there may be noticed in +the cathedral the tomb, with somewhat bombastic inscription, of +Dr. D’Albigny Turberville, the seventeenth-century oculist, +who died, aged 85, in 1696. The flagrant Latin, which tells +us that his fame shall perish no sooner than this marble, does +not allow for human forgetfulness, nor for the advances of +science.</p> +<p>The Normal School in the Close, whence Sue escaped, after +being confined to her room as a punishment for her night’s +escapade with Jude, is a prominent building, described as +“an ancient <a name="page31"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +31</span>edifice of the fifteenth century, once a palace . . . +with mullioned and transomed windows, and a courtyard in front +shut in from the road by a wall.”</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image30" href="images/p30.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Salisbury Cathedral" +title= +"Salisbury Cathedral" + src="images/p30.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>From the ever-impending tragedy of Jude’s ambitions it +is a relief to turn to the pure comedy of Betty Dornell, the +first Countess of Wessex, in that collection of diverting short +stories, <i>A Group of Noble Dames</i>. Looking upon those +two old inns, the “Red Lion” in the High Street and +the “White Hart,” we are reminded that it was to the +first-named that Betty resorted with that husband with whom, +although married at an early age, she had not lived.</p> +<p>“‘Twice we met by accident,’ pleaded Betty +to her mother. ‘Once at Abbot’s Cernel and +another time at the “Red Lion,” +Melchester.’</p> +<p>“‘O, thou deceitful girl!’ cried Mrs. +Dornell. ‘An accident took you to the “Red +Lion” whilst I was staying at the “White +Hart”! I remember—you came in at twelve +o’clock at night and said you’d been to see the +cathedral by the light o’ the moon!’</p> +<p>“‘My ever-honoured mamma, so I had! I only +went to the “Red Lion” with him +afterwards.’”</p> +<p>Nine miles to the north of Melchester stands Stonehenge, +reached after their flight through the deserted midnight streets +of the city by Tess and Angel Clare, vainly endeavouring to elude +justice after the murder of the sham D’Urberville at +Sandbourne. The night was “as dark as a cave,” +and a stiff breeze blew as they came out upon the black solitudes +of Salisbury Plain. For some miles they had proceeded thus, +when “on a sudden <a name="page32"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 32</span>Clare became conscious of some vast +erection close in his front, rising sheer from the grass. +They had almost struck themselves against it.</p> +<p>“‘What monstrous place is this?’ said +Angel.</p> +<p>“‘It hums,’ said she. +‘Hearken!’</p> +<p>“The wind, playing upon the edifice, produced a booming +tune, like the note of some gigantic one-stringed +harp.” It was indeed Stonehenge, “a very Temple +of the Winds.”</p> +<p>And here, as the night wore away, and Tess lay sleeping on the +Altar Stone, and the great trilithons began to show up blackly +against the coming dawn, the figure of a man advancing towards +them appeared rising out of the hollows of the great plain. +At the same time Clare heard the brush of feet behind him: they +were surrounded. Thoughts of resistance came to him; but +“‘It’s no use, sir,’ said the foremost +plain-clothes man: ‘There are sixteen of us on the Plain, +and the whole country is reared.’” And so they +stood watching while Tess finished her sleep.</p> +<p>Stonehenge sadly requires such romantic passages as this to +renew its interest, for, truth to tell, the first glimpse of this +mysterious monument of prehistoric ages is wofully +disappointing. No use to strive against that disappointment +as you come up the long rises from Amesbury under the midday sun +and see its every time-worn cranny displayed mercilessly in the +impudent eye of day: the interval between anticipation and +realisation is too wide, and the apparent smallness and +insignificance of the great stone circles must, although +unwillingly, be allowed. This comparative insignificance +is, however, largely the effect of their almost boundless <a +name="page33"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 33</span>environment +of vast downs, tumid with the attendant circles of prehistoric +tumuli, each tumulus or barrow crowned with its clump of trees, +like the tufted plumes of a hearse.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image32" href="images/p32.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Stonehenge" +title= +"Stonehenge" + src="images/p32.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Mystery continues to shroud the origin of Stonehenge, which +was probably standing when the Romans first overran Britain, and +seems by the most reasoned theories to have really been a Temple +of the Sun. Its name is only the comparatively modern one +of “Stanenges,” or “the hanging stones,” +given by the Saxons, who discovered it with as much astonishment +as exhibited by any one of a later age, and so named it, not from +any reference to the capital punishment of <i>sus. per coll.</i>, +but from the great lintel-stones that are laid flat upon the tall +rude columns, and may fancifully be said to hang in mid-air, at a +height of twenty-five feet.</p> +<p>Those who speak of Stonehenge remaining a “monument to +all time,” speak not according to knowledge, for the poor +old relic is becoming sadly weatherworn and decrepit, and has +aged rapidly of late years. No good has been wrought it by +the fussy interferences and impertinences of +“scientific” men, who, taking advantage of an alleged +necessity for shoring up one the largest stones, dug about the +soil and strove to wrest its secret by the method of sifting the +spadesful of earth and stone chippings. Then a last +indignity befell it. Sir Edward Antrobus, of Amesbury, lord +of the manor, claimed Stonehenge as his manorial property, and, +erecting a barbed-wire fence around it, levied a fee of a +shilling a head for admission through the turnstiles that click +you through, for all the world as though <a +name="page34"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 34</span>you were +entering some Earl’s Court Exhibition. The impudence +that has found it possible to do these things, in defiance of +undoubted public rights of way, bulks majestically—much +larger than Stonehenge itself, whose grey pile it indeed +belittles and vulgarises.</p> +<h2><a name="page35"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +35</span>CHAPTER V</h2> +<p style="text-align: center" class="gutsumm">THE OLD COACH-ROAD: +SALISBURY TO BLANDFORD</p> +<p><span class="smcap">It</span> is thirty-eight and a half miles +from Salisbury to Dorchester, the “Casterbridge” of +the novels, along the old coach-road to Exeter. Speaking as +an exploratory cyclist, I would ten times rather go the reverse +way, from west to east, for the gradients are all against the +westward traveller, and westerly winds are the prevailing airs +during summer and autumn. It is, indeed, a terribly +difficult road, exposed, and very trying in its long rises. +One charming interlude there is, three miles from Salisbury, at +the beautifully situated little village of Coombe Bissett, set +down in the deep valley of an affluent of the Wiltshire Avon; but +it is heartbreaking work climbing out of it again, up the +inclines of Crowden Down. At eight miles’ distance +from Salisbury the old Woodyates Inn, long since re-christened +the “Shaftesbury Arms,” stands in a lonely situation +beside the road, looking regretful for bygone coaching +days. Its old name, deriving from “wood-gates,” +indicated its position on the south-western marches of the wooded +district of Cranborne Chase. When railways disestablished +coaches and the road resumed its solitude, the old inn became for +a time the home of William Day’s <a name="page36"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 36</span>training establishment for +racehorses. He tells, in his recollections, of the drinking +habits of the old Wiltshire farmers in general, and of two in +particular, who used to call at Woodyates when on their way to or +from Salisbury. They would talk, over the fire and their +glasses of grog, somewhat in this fashion of their drunken +exploits when riding home horseback: “Well, John, I fell +off ten times.” “Yes, Thomas, and I fell off a +dozen times: you see, I rode the old black horse, and he always +jerks me about so.” It was said that there was +scarcely a yard of ground over the eight miles that these +worthies had not fallen on to from their horses.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image36" href="images/p36.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Pentridge" +title= +"Pentridge" + src="images/p36.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>At the distance of a mile from the coach-road at this point, +where, by the way, we leave Wilts and enter Dorset, is the Hardy +landmark of “Trantridge,” to be identified with the +little village of Pentridge set down on the map. It was to +Trantridge that Tess came early in her career, from her home at +Marnhull in the Vale of Blackmore, to take service with Mrs. +Stoke-D’Urberville of The <a name="page37"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 37</span>Slopes, relict of Mr. Simon Stoke, +merchant or money-lender, who had unwarrantably assumed the name, +the crest, and arms of the knightly +D’Urbervilles—dead and gone and powerless to resent +the affront. It would be useless to seek The Slopes, rising +in all the glory of its new crimson brick “like a geranium +bloom against the subdued colours around”; but plain to +see, not far away, is the “soft azure landscape of the +Chase—a truly venerable tract of forest land, one of the +few remaining woodlands in England, of undoubted primæval +date.” It was in the Chase that the ruin of Tess was +wrought by Alec D’Urberville.</p> +<p>The exceedingly rustic village of Pentridge nestles under the +lee of a long, partly wooded hill, probably the +“ridge” referred to in the place-name. In the +little highly restored or rebuilt church with the stone spirelet +is now to be seen, since August, 1902, when it was erected, the +plain white marble tablet:</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">To +the Memory of</span><br /> +ROBERT BROWNING,</p> +<p style="text-align: center">of Woodyates, in this parish, who +died Nov. 25th, 1746,<br /> +and is the first known forefather of<br /> +Robert Browning, the poet.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">He was formerly footman and butler +in the<br /> +Bankes family.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">“All service ranks the same +with God.”</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><span +class="smcap">Browning</span>.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>This Tablet</i><br /> +was erected by some of the poet’s friends and admirers<br +/> +1902.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Much reflected glory doubtless accrues to “the Bankes +family” from this tablet, which owes its being <a +name="page38"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 38</span>to the +exertions of Dr. F. J. Furnivall. It seems that the +poet’s ancestor, after severing his connection with the +Bankes, became landlord of the Woodyates Inn, and churchwarden +here.</p> +<p>This entrance to Dorsetshire is not so favourable an one as +that, for example, from Somerset, by Templecombe and Stalbridge +or Sherborne, where Dorset is indeed like unto the Land of +Promise, a land flowing with milk and honey, where herds of +cattle low musically in mead or byre, and the earth is +alluvial—rich, deep, and sticky.</p> +<p>Here is the more arid, elevated country of open down; chalky, +and producing only coarse grass, pine-trees, bracken, and +furze—a sheep-grazing, as opposed to a cattle-rearing, +district. Dorset is indeed a greatly varied county in the +character of its soils. The sheep-grazing districts may be +said to be this of the north-east border, and those other +stretches of lofty, almost waterless chalk downs, running due +east and west, parallel with the coast, with a similarly lengthy, +but broader, stretch in a like direction, from where the downs +rise from the Stour at Sturminster Marshall, past Milton Abbas +and Cerne Abbas, on to Beaminster. In between these are the +valleys of the River Frome—the “Vale of Great +Dairies” of <i>Tess of the D’Urbervilles</i>, and the +“Vale of Little Dairies” in the same story, otherwise +Blackmore Vale. A glance at the map will show the River +Frome flowing in its “green trough of sappiness and +humidity” from the neighbourhood of Beaminster, past +Chilfroom, Frome Vanchurch, and Frampton, which most obviously +take their name from the stream, to Dorchester, Moreton, Wool, +and <a name="page39"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +39</span>Wareham, whence it pours its enriching waters into Poole +Harbour; and another glance will discover the Vale of Little +Dairies, or Blackmore, bounded by Blandford and Minterne Magna, +and the heights of High Stoy on the south, and by Shaftesbury, +Wincanton, and Sherborne on the north; including within its +compass Stalbridge and Sturminster Newton, together with a host +of small villages. The natural outlet of this last +district—which, despite the name of “Little +Dairies,” given to it in the pages of the novels, is a +larger area than that of the Frome valley, and of course produces +in the aggregation more—is the railway junction of +Templecombe, which, beyond being a mere junction, is also an +exceedingly busy and bustling place for the receipt of all this +dairy produce of Blackmore.</p> +<p>Such are, roughly, the main agricultural divisions of Dorset, +which is, to the hard-working farmer who is his own bailiff, with +his family to aid in the dairy-work, still a county where ends +may be made to meet, with a considerable selvedge or overlapping +to sweeten his industry. Despite a very general belief +current in towns, there are still considerable numbers of these +families. The farmer and his wife have largely grown out of +the rustic speech, and their sons and daughters—the +daughters especially, the adaptive dears!—have got culture +for leisure moments, but they are none the less practical for +that. A generation ago, perhaps, things were not so +pleasing, for the then would-be up-to-date attempted the +absurdity of aping the leisured classes, while seeking to carry +on farming and obtain a living by it. Such as those came to +grief, and <a name="page40"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +40</span>were rightly the butts of outside observers, as well as +of moralists of their own class. A thorough-going farmer of +that period, who saw the daughters of his neighbour going on the +way to their music-lesson, reported his feelings and sayings as +follows:</p> +<p>“While I and an’ my wife were out a-milken, they +maidens went by, an’ I zaid to her, ‘Where be they +maidens a-gwoin’?’ an’ she zaid, ‘Oh! +they be a-gwoin’ to their music.’ An’ I +zaid, ‘Oh! a-gwoin’ to their music at +milken-time! That ’ull come to zom’ehat, that +wull.’” And it doubtless did come to a pretty +considerable deal, if—as a doctor might say—the +course of the disease was normal.</p> +<p>Resuming the main road, which for the distance of a mile +beyond Woodyates is identical with the old Roman road, the Via +Iceniana, that ancient relic of a past civilisation may presently +be seen parting company from the modern highway, and going off by +itself, to the left, across the downs, making for the great +fortified hill of Badbury Rings. It is known locally as the +Achling Dyke, and is somewhat conspicuously elevated above the +bracken, the gorse, and heather of these wilds.</p> +<p>Now, passing a few scattered cottages, we come—in +fifteen miles from Coombe Bissett—to a village, the first +on this lonely main road. Tarrant Hinton, this welcome +village, stands on a sparkling little stream, without doubt the +“tarrant,” or torrent, whence it and a small +sisterhood of neighbouring settlements obtain a generic +name. There are Tarrant Gunville, Tarrant Monkton, Tarrant +Rawston, Tarrant Rushton, Tarrant Keynston, and Tarrant Crawford; +and then, as below the last-named place <a +name="page41"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 41</span>the little +stream falls into the Stour, there are no more Tarrants.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image41" href="images/p41.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Eastbury" +title= +"Eastbury" + src="images/p41.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>To Tarrant Gunville belongs Eastbury Park, a place of +Hardyesque and romantic aspect; but, so far, not made the vehicle +of any of his stories. It has, to be sure, a story of its +own—a tale of vaulting ambition which fell on t’other +side. Eastbury was built, like many another ponderous and +overgrown mansion of the eighteenth century, by Vanbrugh, to the +commission of George Dodington, a former Lord of the Admiralty, +who, growing enormously rich by long-continued peculation, +blossomed out as a patron of the arts and a friend of +literature. But before his huge house could be completed he +was gathered to his fathers and to judgment upon his illegitimate +pickings, leaving all his wealth to his grandnephew, George Bubb +<a name="page42"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 42</span>Dodington, +afterwards Lord Melcombe, who lavished £140,000 on the +completion of the works. Here he too became a patron, and +entertained the literary men of his time until 1762, when, dying, +the property went to Earl Temple, who, unable to afford the +expense of maintaining the immense place, actually +offered—and offered in vain—an income of £200 a +year to any one who would reside at Eastbury and keep it in +repair. As this bait failed, the great house was dismantled +and demolished, piecemeal, in 1795, only one wing remaining to +attest its former grandeur.</p> +<p>But traces of that grandeur are not wanting, from the iron +railings, stone piers, and decorative kerbs, carved boldly with +an acanthus-leaved design, that conduct into the demesne, to the +magnificent clumps of beeches and other forest trees studding the +sward of what was the park; and that remaining wing itself, still +disclosing in its arcade, or loggia, something of +Vanbrugh’s design.</p> +<p>Eastbury, of course, is haunted—so much is to be +expected of such a place; but those who have seen the headless +coachman and his ghostly four-in-hand issuing from the park +gates, or returning, are growing scarce, and times are become so +sceptical that even they cannot obtain credence. So, with a +sigh for the decay of belief, we will e’en on through +Pimperne down to Blandford, which good town, of fine dignified +classic architectural presence, the coach-road enters in a timid +back-doors manner, down a narrow byway.</p> +<p>Blandford is further dignified by that curious pedantic +Latinity very marked in many Dorsetshire place-names. In +this manner it is made to figure <a name="page43"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 43</span>as “Blandford Forum,” a +rendering of “Blandford Market.” In Mr. Thomas +Hardy’s pages it is “Shottsford Forum,” and so +appears in his story of <i>Barbara of the House of Grebe</i>, in +<i>Far from the Madding Crowd</i>, and again in <i>The +Woodlanders</i>, wherein it is stated, from the mouth of a rustic +character, that “Shottsford is Shottsford still: you +can’t victual your carcass there unless you’ve got +money, and you can’t buy a cup of genuine there, whether or +no”; this last a sad drawback from the amenities of a +delightful town. But there is a very excellent pump, and an +historic, in the broad High Street, whereon, cast in enduring +iron, it may be read how a certain John Bastard, a +“considerable sharer” in the great calamity by which +Blandford was burnt in 1731, “humbly erected this monument, +in grateful Acknowledgement of the Divine Mercy, That has since +raised this Town, Like the Phoenix from its Ashes, to its present +flourishing and beautiful State.” That, it will be +allowed, is rather a fine, curly, and romantic way of putting +it. A rider to this inscription goes on to say that in 1899 +the Corporation of Blandford converted the pump into a +drinking-fountain, and that the Blandford Waterworks Company, not +halting in good deeds, gratuitously supplies the water.</p> +<p>The pilgrim who, arriving in Blandford hot, dusty and thirsty, +and perhaps mindful of that alleged impossibility of buying a cup +of genuine, essays to drink from the fountain, is at first +surprised at the keen interest taken in his proceedings by a +quickly collecting group of urchins. Their curiosity +appears to be in the nature of surprise at the sight of a grown +man drinking water, but light is shed upon <a +name="page44"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 44</span>it when, +pressing hard the obstinate knob that releases the fount, the +thing suddenly gives way and squirts half a pint or so up his +sleeve. This is a never-failing form of entertainment to +the youth of Blandford, and a cheap one.</p> +<p>Not once, but several times has Blandford been destroyed by +fire. It owed these disasters to the old Dorsetshire +fashion of thatched roofs, and only in time, by dint of repeated +happenings in this sort, learned wisdom. This light dawned +at the time when the classic revival in architecture was +flourishing, and thus, as already hinted, Blandford’s High +Street is wholly of that character. Classicism does not +often make for beauty in English towns, but here the general +effect is admirable, and although the stone of the fine +church-tower—designed in the same taste—is of a +jaundiced greenish-yellow hue, it is a noble feature.</p> +<p>Blandford’s natives have sometimes won to a great deal +more than local fame; witness Alfred Stevens, the designer of the +Wellington monument in St. Paul’s Cathedral, who was born +in 1817, in Salisbury Street, that back-doors coach-road entrance +into the town already mentioned. Willowes, the unhappy +husband of Barbara, of the House of Grebe, was a descendant of +one of the old families of glass-painters of Shottsford mentioned +in that story, and more particularly referred to by Aubrey, the +antiquary, who says: “Before the Reformation, I believe +there was no country or great town in England but had glasse +painters. Old Harding of Blandford in Dorsetshire, where I +went to schoole, was the only country glasse painter that ever I +knew. Upon play daies I was wont to visit <a +name="page46"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 46</span>his shop and +furnaces. He dyed about 1643, aged about 83 or +more.” That craft has long since died out from the +town.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image45" href="images/p45.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Blandford Forum" +title= +"Blandford Forum" + src="images/p45.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>A beautiful backward view of the town is obtained on leaving +it, over the Town Bridge that spans the sluggish, lily-grown +Stour, at the entrance to Lord Portman’s noble park of +Bryanstone. Here a dense overarching canopy of trees gives +a grateful shade on summer days and frames the distant prospect +whence the classic tower of the church grandly rises. The +entrance-gates to the domain of Bryanstone are jealously kept +locked and guarded, but there be ways of circumventing this +churlish exclusiveness and of seeing the astonishingly beautiful +scenery of the park, as the present writer has by chance +discovered for himself. You, at the cost of some effort in +hill-climbing, take the defences in the rear, and entering away +back by the farmstead and workshops of the estate, come down by +the finest of the scenery to those selfsame locked gates at these +outskirts of Blandford, to observe and hear with some secret +satisfaction the expressed horror of the lodge-keeper, only too +anxious to let you out and be rid of you.</p> +<p>But, for the unenterprising, there is a sufficiently beautiful +distant view of the park and of the new mansion from the Town +Bridge. A former Lord Portman in 1780 employed James Wyatt +to build him a classic mansion which remained until the rule of +the present owner of the title, who demolished and replaced it +with the fine mansion designed by Norman Shaw, R.A., and built in +red brick and Portland stone.</p> +<h2><a name="page47"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +47</span>CHAPTER VI</h2> +<p style="text-align: center" class="gutsumm">THE OLD COACH-ROAD: +BLANDFORD TO DORCHESTER</p> +<p><span class="smcap">From</span> this point the old coach-road +becomes astonishingly hilly, so that mere words cannot accurately +portray it, and recourse must be had to the eloquent armoury of +the printer’s case to set it forth in any truly convincing +manner. The series of semicircular dumpling hills is not +adequately to be shadowed forth by the aid of mere +brackets—we must picture them thus:</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p47.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Representation of Hills in Type" +title= +"Representation of Hills in Type" + src="images/p47.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>and, to give some notion of the quality of the surface during +the heats of summer, let a glaring white surface five inches deep +in dust and powdered flint be imagined, the whole stirred up into +a stifling halo of floating particles by the frequent passage of +a flock of sheep. Such is the Exeter Road between Blandford +and Dorchester in the merry months of summer.</p> +<p>Five miles of this bring us to the village of Winterborne +Whitchurch, anciently referred to as “Album +Monasterium” or “Blaunch Minster,” situated in +the stony bottom where the little stream called the Winterborne +does not in summer flow across the road. John Wesley, +grandfather of the <a name="page48"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +48</span>more famous John, the founder of Methodism, was vicar of +this parish in 1658, and on the Restoration was dispossessed, +when he took to a life of itinerant preaching amid the hills and +dales of Dorsetshire, not altogether dissimilar from that of his +celebrated grandson. Here, about 1540, was born George +Turberville, the poet. To this succeeds, in less than +another three miles, Milborne St. Andrew, on the less dried up +Mill Bourne. This, the “Millpond St. +Jude’s” alluded to in <i>Far from the Madding +Crowd</i>, is a pretty place, of an old-world coaching interest, +reflected from its partly thatched “Royal Oak” inn +and the post office, once the “White Hart,” with the +imposing effigy of a white hart still prominent on its cornice, +in company with those of two foxes and a row of miniature +cannon. Up along a byroad, past the feathery poplars that +lend so feminine an air of beauty to the village, is the church, +and then the Manor House Farm, once the residence of the Mansell +Pleydells, who since the building of Whatcombe House, near by +Winterborne Whitchurch, in 1758, have left this residence to +farming. The red-brick pillars of the entrance-gates +remain—partly ruined and standing foolishly, without a +trace of the old carriage drive that once went between +them—on the grass, surmounted still with sculptured +displays of military trophies surrounding a cartouche bearing the +lichened arms of the Pleydells, including an inescutcheon of +pretence showing that before they allied themselves with a +Mansell they married money with a Morton. It is a fine +house, full of character, with unusually—and somewhat +foreign-looking—high-pitched roof. Grand old trees +lead up to it, and in the distance <a name="page49"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 49</span>one perceives a manorial +pigeon-house, against the skyline. The old drive led round +to the other side of the mansion, where it is divided from the +meadows by a moatlike cut in the Mill Bourne, now, however, +richer in mud than in water, and crossed by a brick bridge. +We can picture Lady Constantine, the susceptible young and +wealthy widow of the defunct Sir Blount, stealing at night over +this bridge, to visit Swithin St. Cleeve, stargazing in his +lonely tower on the hilltop. In the garden, with its +sundial, are pretty old-world box-edged flower-beds and shady +arbours. Foundations of many demolished buildings are +traceable in the meadows.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image49" href="images/p49.jpg"> +<img alt= +"The Old Manor-House, Milborne St. Andrew" +title= +"The Old Manor-House, Milborne St. Andrew" + src="images/p49.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>The scene of <i>Two on a Tower</i> is a selection from various +places. “The tower,” Mr. Hardy writes <a +name="page50"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 50</span>to me, +“had two or three originals—Horton, Charborough, +etc.” Those other places are duly described in these +pages, but the “etc.” covers the curious brick +obelisk built on the summit of the earthwork-encircled hill near +by this old manor-house of Milborne St. Andrew, and called +Weatherbury Castle. Standing on this “fir-shrouded +hilltop,” one may see, for many miles around, summer +conflagrations among the furze on Bere Heath, the tall tower in +Charborough Park, which, much more than this obelisk, resembles +Swithin’s observatory, and, near at hand, below, this old +manor-house, the “Welland House” of the story. +From this eyrie, too, you perceive the old Exeter Road swooping +whitely downhill, and hear the hum of threshing-machines, coming +up, like the drowsy buzz of insects, from the vale.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image50" href="images/p50.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Weatherbury Castle" +title= +"Weatherbury Castle" + src="images/p50.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>It is not difficult to detect sarcasm in the description of +this hill. It “was (according to some <a +name="page52"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 52</span>antiquaries) +an old Roman camp—if it were not (as others insisted) an +old British castle, or (as the rest swore) an old Saxon field of +Witanagemote—with remains of an outer and an inner vallum, +a winding path leading up between their overlapping ends by an +easy ascent.”</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image51" href="images/p51.jpg"> +<img alt= +"The Obelisk, Weatherbury Castle" +title= +"The Obelisk, Weatherbury Castle" + src="images/p51.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Not so easy, really—indeed, demanding a rather strenuous +climb. And when you are on the crest of that ancient glacis +(impregnable it might well have been when men fought hand to +hand) it is with some difficulty you penetrate the dense woodland +growing within this <i>ceinture</i>. Little can in these +times be seen of the obelisk from without: only from one +particular view-point can you observe its ultimate inches and the +metal ball that caps it, rising mysteriously from amid the +topmost branches of the fir-trees. Its situation is exactly +described in the story: “The gloom and solitude which +prevailed round the base were remarkable. The sob of the +environing trees” (how like, by the way, to that passage in +Mr. W. S. Gilbert’s <i>Ruddigore</i>, “the sob of the +breeze is heard in the trees”) “was here expressively +manifest, and, moved by the light breeze, their thin straight +stems rocked in seconds, like inverted pendulums, while some +boughs and twigs rubbed the pillar’s sides, or occasionally +clicked in catching each other. Below the level of their +summits the masonry was lichen-stained and mildewed, for the sun +never pierced that moaning cloud of blue-black vegetation. +Pads of moss grew in the joints of the stonework, and here and +there shade-loving insects had engraved on the mortar patterns of +no human style or meaning, but curious and suggestive.”</p> +<p><a name="page53"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 53</span> +<a href="images/p53.jpg"> +<img class='floatright' alt= +"E.M.P. inscription on obelisk" +title= +"E.M.P. inscription on obelisk" + src="images/p53.jpg" /> +</a>The why or purpose of this slight brick structure are +lost. The only clue, afforded by the inscription on a stone +tablet set in the lichened bricks, points to it being the +handiwork of a Pleydell. It was, in fact, built by Edmund +Morton Pleydell, but his purpose, if indeed he had one beyond a +singular notion of ornament, has passed, with himself, beyond +these voices; and the neglected condition of the +monument—if indeed it be a monument—fully bears out +the moral reflection in <i>Two on a Tower</i>. “Here +stood this aspiring piece of masonry, erected as the most +conspicuous and ineffaceable reminder of a man that could be +thought of; and yet the whole aspect of the memorial betokened +forgetfulness. Probably not a dozen people within the +district knew the name of the person commemorated, while perhaps +not a soul remembered whether the column were hollow or solid, +whether with or without a tablet explaining its date and +purpose.”</p> +<p>Regaining the high road and passing uphill by where the +Dewlish toll-gate once stood, and by an up-and-down course +infinitely varied as to gradient, we come at length down to the +valley of the Piddle, and to Piddletown, the +“Weatherbury” of <i>Far from the Madding Crowd</i>, +where Gabriel Oak, come down in the world by the agency of Fate +and his foolish young sheep-dog, took service with his +distractingly elusive dear, Bathsheba Everdene, the +lady-farmer. Weatherbury, as Mr. Hardy regretfully tells +us, is not the Weatherbury he once knew. It has indeed been +very largely rebuilt, and the rather stern and prim limestone +cottages that stand <a name="page54"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +54</span>prominently in one of its several streets do not +altogether prepossess one in favour of this village that is not +quite a townlet and yet may quite possibly resent the more rustic +definition. The “several” streets are, after +all, rather roads, with rows of houses and cottages less +integrally than incidentally there, and the several are perhaps +reducible to a term less connotive of number; but they run in +unexpected directions and uncovenanted angles, and so make an +imposing show, comparable with the effect produced by six supers +who, by judicious stage-management in passing and repassing, can +be made to represent an army. But the Piddle, running +sparkling and clear through Piddletown, redeems the conjoined +effect of those streets and gives the place a final and +definitive <i>cachet</i> of rurality, by no means belied by the +very large, though very rustic, church—happily still +unrestored, and, with its tall pews and fine Jacobean carved oak +choir-gallery, a perfect picture of an ancient Wessex place of +worship. Hardean village choirs and Gabriel Oak’s +bass voice take, if it be possible, an even greater air of +actuality to the pilgrim who enters here.</p> +<p>The interest of Piddletown church is added to by the fine and +curious bowl font, diapered in an unusual pattern, and by the +tombs of the Martins of Athelhampton, who lie mediævally +recumbent in effigy in their own chapel, quite unconcerned, +although scored over with the initials of the undistinguished, +and although their old manor-house of Athelhampton, near by, on +the road to Bere Regis, has since the time they became extinct +passed through several alien hands. Poor old fellows! +Their somewhat threatening motto, under their old <a +name="page56"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 56</span>monkey crest, +of “He who looks at Martin’s ape Martin’s ape +shall look at him!” has lost any point it ever had.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image55" href="images/p55.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Piddletown" +title= +"Piddletown" + src="images/p55.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>A touching epitaph desires your prayers for two of the +family:</p> +<blockquote><p>Here lyeth the body of Xpofer Martyn Esquyer,<br +/> +Sone and heyre unto Syr Willym Martyn, knyght,<br /> +Pray for there Soules with harty desyre<br /> +That bothe may be sure of Eternall lyght;<br /> +Calling to Remembraunce that ev’ry wyhgt<br /> +Most nedys dye, and therefor lett us pray<br /> +As other for us may do Another day.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This church of Piddletown, or “Weatherbury,” is +the scene of Sergeant Troy’s belated remorse and of the +acute misery of that incident where, coming by the light of a +lantern and planting flowers on Fanny Robin’s grave, he +sleeps in the porch while the rain-storm breaks and the +storm-water from the gurgoyles of the tower spouts furiously over +the spot.</p> +<p>“The persistent torrent from the gurgoyle’s jaws +directed all its vengeance into the grave. The rich tawny +mould was stirred into motion, and boiled like chocolate. +The water accumulated and washed deeper down, and the roar of the +pool thus formed spread into the night. . . . The flowers +so carefully planted by Fanny’s repentant lover began to +move and writhe in their bed. The winter-violets turned +slowly upside down, and became a mere mat of mud. Soon the +snowdrops and other bulbs danced in the boiling mass like +ingredients in a cauldron. Plants of the tufted species +were loosened, rose to the surface, and floated off.”</p> +<p><a name="page57"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 57</span>The +street beside the church retains a good deal of its quaint +features of thatch and plaster, with deep eaves where the +house-martins build. A pretty corner including an old +thatched house with architectonic windows closely resembling +those of a Queen Anne bureau, and supported on pillars having a +cousinship with classic art, is especially noticeable.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image57" href="images/p57.jpg"> +<img alt= +"A quaint corner in Piddletown" +title= +"A quaint corner in Piddletown" + src="images/p57.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>If we wish to see the old mansion that served as model for +Bathsheba’s farm, we shall not find it in Piddletown, but +must turn aside and proceed up the valley of the Piddle, in the +direction of Piddlehinton and Piddletrenthide—usually +termed “Longpiddle.” Before reaching these, at +the distance of rather over a mile, we come to Lower Walterstone, +where, behind noble groups of beeches, horse-chestnuts, and +sycamores growing on raised <a name="page58"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 58</span>grassy banks, it will be found, in +the shape of a Jacobean mansion eloquently portrayed by the +novelist:</p> +<p>“By daylight, the bower of Oak’s new-found +mistress, Bathsheba Everdene, presented itself as a hoary +building, of the Jacobean stage of Classic Renaissance as regards +its architecture, and of a proportion which told at a glance +that, as is so frequently the case, it had once been the manorial +hall upon a small estate around it, now altogether effaced as a +distinct property, and merged in the vast tract of a non-resident +landlord which comprised several such modest demesnes. +Fluted pilasters, worked from the solid stone, decorated its +front, and above the roof pairs of chimneys were here and there +linked by an arch, some gables and other unmanageable features +still retaining traces of their Gothic extraction. Soft +brown mosses, like faded velveteen, formed cushions upon the +stone tiling, and tufts of the houseleek or sengreen sprouted +from the eaves of the low surrounding buildings. A gravel +walk leading from the door to the road in front was incrusted at +the sides with more moss—here it was a silver-green +variety, the nut-brown of the gravel being visible to the width +of only a foot or two in the centre. This circumstance, and +the generally sleepy air of the whole prospect here, together +with the animated and contrasting state of the reverse +façade, suggested to the imagination that, on the +adaptation of the building for farming purposes, the vital +principle of the house had turned round inside its body, to face +the other way.”</p> +<p>The way from Piddletown to Dorchester, passing <a +name="page59"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 59</span>the hamlet +singularly and interestingly named “Troy Town,” +which, although itself intrinsically without visible interest, +invites speculation, presently passes over Yellowham Hill, +clothed in luxuriant woods. This spot, the “Yalbury +Hill” of Troy’s excruciatingly pitiful meeting with +Fanny Robin, figures, together with the woodlands—the +“Yalbury Great Wood” of <i>Under the Greenwood +Tree</i>—in several others among the Wessex stories. +Coming to it in old times, the coaches changed horses at the +“Buck’s Head” inn, now quite disestablished and +forgot, save for the humorous description of it to be found in +the pages of <i>Far from the Madding Crowd</i>. +Unswervingly the highway passes over its crest and down on the +other side, the wayfarer along <a name="page60"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 60</span>it watched by bright-eyed squirrels +and the other lesser fauna of this dense covert, while he thinks +himself unobserved. It is a lovely road, but you should see +it and its encompassing woods in autumn, when the October +sunshine, with that characteristic golden sheen peculiar to the +time of year, falls between the rich red trunks of the firs on to +the golden-brown of the dried bracken; when the acorns are ripe +on the dwarf oaks and fall with startling little crashes into the +sere leaves of the undergrowth; when the nuts are ripe on the +hazels and the squirrels—too busy now to follow the +wayfarer’s movements—are industriously all day long +gathering store of them over against winter. Then Yellowham +Woods are at their finest.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image59" href="images/p59.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Lower Walterstone Farm: Original of Bathsheba’s farm" +title= +"Lower Walterstone Farm: Original of Bathsheba’s farm" + src="images/p59.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Where the descent from this eminence reaches an intermediate +level, preparatory to diving again downwards, the road takes a +curve through the park-lands of Kingston House, a stately but +cold-looking mansion of stone, figuring in that first novel, +<i>Desperate Remedies</i>, as “Knapwater +House.” The bias of the architect, as he then was, is +prominently displayed in Mr. Hardy’s description of it: +“The house was regularly and substantially built of clean +grey freestone throughout, in that plainer fashion of Greek +classicism which prevailed at the latter end of the last century, +when the copyists called designers had grown weary of fantastic +variations in the Roman orders. The main block approximated +to a square on the ground plan, having a projection in the centre +of each side, surmounted by a pediment. From each angle of +the north side ran a line of buildings lower than the rest, +turning inwards again at their farthest end, and <a +name="page61"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 61</span>forming +within them a spacious open court, within which resounded an echo +of astounding clearness. These erections were in their turn +backed by ivy-covered ice-houses, laundries, and stables, the +whole mass of subsidiary buildings being half buried beneath +close-set shrubs and trees.”</p> +<p>Leaving aside, for the present, an exploration of Stinsford, +down the next turning, to come later to a particular and intimate +discussion of it, we proceed to Dorchester, whose houses, and +those of its allied suburb of Fordington, are now seen, crowning +the ridge on which the old county town stands.</p> +<h2><a name="page62"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +62</span>CHAPTER VII</h2> +<p style="text-align: center" class="gutsumm">DORCHESTER</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Dorchester</span>, the +“Casterbridge” of the novels, stands upon or, more +correctly, above, the River Frome, and from that circumstance +derived its ancient Roman name of Durnovaria, whose Latinity Mr. +Hardy has exploited in the name of “Durnover” he +confers upon Fordington. The Romans themselves did by no +means invent their name for the station they founded here, but +just adapted the title given by the native tribe of Durotriges to +their settlement. Those natives, who were of Welsh stock, +styled their habitation by the sufficiently Welsh name of +Dwrinwyr, which, like all Cymric place-names, was descriptive and +alluded to its watery situation.</p> +<p>The approach to Dorchester has suffered in late years, in the +pictorial point of view, from the decay and destruction of many +of those magnificent old elms that once formed a noble +introduction along this, the “London Road”; but it is +not wholly to be bankrupted of beauty, for, although Dorchester +may continue to grow, it is not in this direction that its +suburbs will be thrown out. The flat water-meadows of the +Frome forbid building operations here, and in effect say, at the +bridge <a name="page63"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +63</span>immediately below where Fordington on its ridge stands +on the thitherward bank of the stream—“thus far and +no farther!” From this approach, looking to where +Fordington’s houses die away on the left hand, and to where +the chalky downs begin to rise, you may obtain a distant view of +the novelist’s residence, a house he himself designed, +standing beside the Wareham Road near where an old turnpike-gate +stood, and called from it “Max Gate.” Looking, +however, straight ahead, the road into Dorchester is seen +becoming a street and going with inflexible Roman directness +through the town, with the ancient church tower of Fordington +slightly to the left, and the equally ancient church of St. +Peter’s immediately in front, in the centre of the town, +where the two main streets cross. Attendant modern churches +and chapels, and the Town Hall, with spires, act as +satellites. To the right hand, rising bulky from the +huddled mass of houses, is a grey building which but a little +experience of touring in England identifies without need of +inquiry as the gaol.</p> +<p>Dorchester, figuring as the “Casterbridge” of that +mayor whose surprising history is set forth in that powerful +story, bulks large in the whole series of Wessex novels—as +how could it fail of doing, seeing that the novelist himself was +born at Upper Bockhampton, only three miles away? In +masterly fashion he has described its salient points, as they +were before modernity had come to obliterate them, or at least to +take off the sharp edge of their singularity. He has +expended much thought upon Roman Dorchester, and speculated upon +what manner of place it was fifteen hundred years ago. <a +name="page64"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +64</span>“Casterbridge announced old Rome in every street, +alley, and precinct. It looked Roman, bespoke the art of +Rome, concealed dead men of Rome. It was impossible to dig +more than a foot or two deep about the town fields and gardens +without coming upon some tall soldier or other of the Empire, who +had lain there in his silent unobtrusive rest for a space of +fifteen hundred years.” Nay, even within the +precincts of his own garden, on the edge of the rotund upland +that looks so wanly down upon the railway, relics of the +legionaries have been discovered. Three of those stout +warriors were there found. “Each body was fitted +with, one may almost say, perfect accuracy into the oval hole, +the crown of the head touching the maiden chalk at one end and +the toes at the other, the tight-fitting situation being strongly +suggestive of the chicken in the egg-shell.”</p> +<p>More attuned to modern times is that description of Dorchester +as it appeared when Susan, Henchard’s wife, with +Elizabeth-Jane, entered it from the London Road that +evening. Wonderfully observed and true is that passage +where the light of the street lamps, glimmering through those +engirdling trees that were then, even more than now, the great +feature of the town, is made a snug and comforting contrast with +the outside country, seeming “strangely solitary and vacant +in aspect, considering its nearness to life.” Then +the agricultural and pastoral pursuits of the people, as +reflected in the character of the goods displayed in shop +windows, is neatly shown, in a list of those objects: the +hay-rakes, the seed-lips, butter-firkins, hoes and spades and +mattocks; the horse-embrocations, <a name="page65"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 65</span>scythes, reaping-hooks, and +hedger’s and ditcher’s gloves, articles all of +everyday requirement.</p> +<p>The “grizzled church” to which they came was St. +Peter’s, whose tower showed “how completely the +mortar from the joints of the stonework had been nibbled out by +time and weather, which had planted in the crevices thus made +little tufts of stone-crop and grass, almost as far up as the +very battlements.” Yes, and so one vividly remembers +it; but restoration has recently made away with all these +evidences of age, and cleaned the stonework and renewed and +pointed it, greatly to the aid of the tower’s structural +stability, ’tis true, but the very death of picturesque +effect. There is a pleasing thing here, at the foot of this +tower, where High East Street and High West Street join. It +is the bronze life-sized statue, in his habit as he lived, of +“Pa’son Barnes,” otherwise the Reverend William +Barnes, the Dorset poet, described by Thomas Hardy as he is +represented here—“an aged clergyman, quaintly attired +in caped cloak, knee-breeches and buckled shoes, with a leather +satchel slung over his shoulders and a stout staff in his +hand.” This quaint figure, whose life and thoughts +and writings were racy of the soil whence he sprang—he was +born in the Vale of Blackmore—was for many years a quite +inadequately rewarded schoolmaster, and only late in life was +given, first the living of Whitcomb, and then that of Winterborne +Came, near Dorchester. His poems in the Dorsetshire +vernacular, long known and admired, were not pecuniarily +successful. “What a mockery is life!” said +he. “They praise me, and take away my bread! +They may be putting up a statue to me <a name="page66"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 66</span>some day, when I am dead, while all I +want now is leave to live. I asked for bread, and they gave +me a stone!”</p> +<p>Prophetic indeed! for here is the statue, with beneath it the +inscription:</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: center">WILLIAM BARNES<br /> +1801–1886</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and the quotation from one of his own folk-poems:</p> +<blockquote><p>Zoo now I hope his kindly fëace<br /> +Is gone to vind a better plëace,<br /> +But still wi’ vo’k a’ left behind<br /> +He’ll always be a kept in mind.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The mural monument of a sixteenth-century Thomas Hardy, within +the church, attracts attention. The inscription states him +to have been “esquire” and of Melcombe Regis, and +goes on to describe his benefactions to the town and the +gratitude of the “Baylives and Burgisses” +therefor. To “commend to posterity an example soe +worthy of imitation,” they erected this tablet. He is +said to be the common ancestor of Admiral Sir Thomas Hardy, the +friend and comrade of Nelson, and of Thomas Hardy, the +novelist.</p> +<p>Still from this tower of St. Peter’s sounds the curfew +chime, with the stroke of eight o’clock every evening, as +described in the story; its “peremptory clang” the +signal for shop-shutting throughout the town. “Other +clocks struck eight from time to time—one gloomily from the +gaol, another from the gable of an alms-house, with a preparative +creak of machinery more audible than the note of the +bell.”</p> +<p><a name="page67"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 67</span>In High +East Street stands, just as described, the principal inn—I +suppose in these times one should, for fear of disrespect say +“hotel”—of Dorchester, the “King’s +Arms,” white-faced, with the selfsame “spacious +bow-window projected into the street over the main +portico,” the whole not too imposing for comfort, and not +too homely for dignity. It was a coaching house in days +gone by. From a step above the pavement on the opposite +side of the street Susan and Elizabeth-Jane, amid the crowd, +witnessed the dinner given to the mayor, and through the archway +Boldwood carried Bathsheba, fainting at the news of her +husband’s death.</p> +<p>Equally white-faced, but a good deal more picturesque, is the +“White Hart,” down at the end, or the beginning if +you will, of the sloping street, as you enter the town. By +it runs the Frome, and in its courtyard on market-days may be +seen such a concourse of carriers’ carts as rarely +witnessed nowadays. Dorchester is a busy carrying centre, +by no means spoiled in that respect by railways, which yet fail +to reach many of its surrounding villages.</p> +<p>The brick bridge that here spans the Frome, and the stone +bridge some distance farther away, spanning a branch of the same +stream out away in the meads, have their parts in the <i>Mayor of +Casterbridge</i>. “These bridges had speaking +countenances. Every projection in each was worn down to +obtuseness, partly by weather, more by friction from generations +of loungers, whose toes and heels had from year to year made +restless movements against these parapets, as they had stood +there, meditating on the aspect of affairs. In the case <a +name="page68"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 68</span>of the more +pliable bricks and stones, even the flat faces were worn into +hollows by the same mixed mechanism. The masonry of the top +was clamped with iron at each joint; since it had been no +uncommon thing for desperate men to wrench the coping off and +throw it down into the river, in reckless defiance of the +magistrates. For to this pair of bridges gravitated all the +failures of the town—those who had failed in business, in +love, in sobriety, in crime. Why the unhappy hereabout +usually chose the bridges for their meditations in preference to +a railing, a gate, or a stile, was not so clear.” He +goes on to tell how there was a marked difference in quality +between the frequenters of the near bridge of brick and the far +one of stone. The more thoroughgoing failures and those +with the most threadbare characters, or with no characters at +all, save bad ones, preferred the near bridge: to reach it +entailed less trouble, and it was not for such as them to mind +the glare of publicity.</p> +<p>“The <i>misérables</i> who would pause on the +remoter bridge were of a politer stamp. They included +bankrupts, hypochondriacs, persons who were what is called +‘out of a situation’ from fault or lucklessness, the +inefficient of the professional class—shabby-genteel men, +who did not know how to get rid of the weary time between +breakfast and dinner, and the yet more weary time between dinner +and dark.” These unfortunates gazed steadily into the +river, never turning to notice passers-by, and indeed shrinking +from observation. And so day by day they looked and looked +in the stream, until at last their bodies were sometimes found in +it.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image69" href="images/p69.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Ten Hatches, Dorchester" +title= +"Ten Hatches, Dorchester" + src="images/p69.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p><a name="page70"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 70</span>When +Henchard’s ruin was complete, he too began to frequent the +stone bridge, and would have ended in the same way, not at the +bridge itself, but over in the meadows where the many branches of +the Frome are regulated and controlled by a number of sluices +known as Ten Hatches. “To the east of Casterbridge +lay moors and meadows, through which much water flowed. The +wanderer in this direction, who should stand still for a few +moments on a quiet night, might hear singular symphonies from +these waters, as from a lampless orchestra, all playing in their +sundry tones, from near and far parts of the moor. At a +hole in a rotten weir they executed a recitative; where a +tributary brook fell over a stone breastwork they trilled +cheerily; under an arch they performed a metallic cymballing; and +at Durnover Weir they hissed. The spot at which their +instrumentation rose loudest was a place called Ten Hatches, +whence during high springs there proceeded a very fugue of +sounds.”</p> +<p>The ruined mayor, to whom, and not the cold, successful Donald +Farfrae, the reader’s sympathies go out, would have ended +all his troubles here with a plunge in the waters, had it not +been for the ghastly floating Skimmington effigy of himself he +saw floating down the current as he was about to drop in.</p> +<p>“Gray’s Bridge,” as the stone structure on +the London Road is known, is that toward which Bob Loveday, in +the <i>Trumpet Major</i>, gazed anxiously, awaiting the coach +bearing his Matilda, and across it, of course, on their way to +Longpiddle, went those “Crusted Characters,” telling +stories in the carrier’s <a name="page71"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 71</span>cart jogging along with them so +comfortably from the “White Hart.”</p> +<p>The fateful, almost sentient, character many natural objects +are made to assume in the march of Mr. Hardy’s tragic +stories is expressly shown in his description of the Roman +amphitheatre of Maumbury, at the farther or western extremity of +Dorchester, beside the road to Weymouth. He styles it +“the Ring, on the Budmouth Road,” and explains how +“it was to Casterbridge what the ruined Coliseum is to +modern Rome, and was nearly of the same magnitude.” +It is not, as might be gathered from this passage, a building, +like the Coliseum, but a vast amphitheatre formed by +earthworks. Used by the Romans as the scene of their +gladiatorial displays, it has doubtless witnessed many an act of +savage cruelty, but is now a solitude. A sinister place it +has been always, for, when executions were public affairs, the +gallows stood within the old arena; and until well into the +eighteenth century the populace came to it in thousands to +witness the execution of felons where, before the dawn of the +Christian era, fighting men had struggled to the death: where +perhaps, in early Christian times, in the days of the Diocletian +persecution, Christians had been sacrificed. It was here, +in 1705, that Mary Channing was executed, under the most fearful +circumstances of barbarity belonging to the penalties prescribed +for <i>petit treason</i>. The crimes known by that name +included several forms of rebellion against authority, among them +the murder of a husband by a wife. A husband being then, +much more than now, in the eyes of the law in a position of +authority over his wife, to murder <a name="page72"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 72</span>him was not merely murder—it +was <i>petit treason</i> as well, and therefore deserving of +exceptional punishment. Mary Brookes, married by the wish +of her parents, against her own inclination, to one Richard +Channing of Dorchester, a grocer, almost ruined him by her +extravagance, and then poisoned him by giving him white mercury, +first in rice-milk, and twice afterwards in a glass of +wine. At the Summer Assizes, 1704, she was found guilty and +condemned to death. On March 21st, 1705, accordingly, she +was strangled here, in this arena, and then burned, the horrible +spectacle being witnessed by ten thousand persons. She was +but nineteen years of age. This Golgotha was disestablished +in 1767, when the gallows was removed to the decent solitudes of +Bradford Down, a mile and a half along the Exeter Road, on the +way to Bridport. It was to this spot that a mayor of +Dorchester desired to escort a distinguished traveller leaving +the town, after being presented with the customary address. +“May I be allowed to accompany your Highness as far as the +gallows?” he asked, greatly to the dismay of that departing +Serenity, to whom the allusion seemed more ill-omened than really +it was. It is a tale told of many places and many mayors, +and he would be a clever commentator who should distinguish the +real original.</p> +<p>The lone amphitheatre of Maumbury has thus, it will be seen, +real tragical associations fitting it for the novelist’s +more sombre humours. He tells how intrigues were there +carried forward, how furtive and sinister meetings happened +within the rim of these ancient earthworks, and how, although <a +name="page73"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 73</span>the patching +up of long-standing feuds might be attempted on this spot, seldom +had it been the place of meeting of happy lovers. In this +ring, then, the reconciliation of Susan and Henchard took place, +after eighteen years, and was but the prelude to miseries and +disasters.</p> +<h2><a name="page74"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +74</span>CHAPTER VIII</h2> +<p style="text-align: center" class="gutsumm">DORCHESTER +(<i>continued</i>)</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Henchard’s</span> +house—“one of the best, faced with dull red-and-grey +old brick,” there are many such here—was in the +neighbourhood of North Street, and not far from that Corn +Exchange where Bathsheba was wont, on market days, to mingle with +the burly farmers and corn-factors, like a yacht among ironclads, +displaying for inspection the sample wheat in her outstretched +palm.</p> +<p>Down here, too, is the gaol, whose mass is seen from the meads +on approaching the town. It has been much altered, but the +heavy stone gateway, together with the flanking walls of red +brick, is very much as of old. Happily, such things as are +noticed in that gruesome short story, <i>The Withered Arm</i>, +are things only of dreadful memory. At that time the +populace of Dorchester were accustomed to wait below in the +meadows, eager to witness the executioner, the +criminals—murderers, burglars, rick-firers, sheep and +horse-stealers, even down to those convicted of petty +larceny—being capitally condemned and hanged as high as, +possibly indeed higher than, Haman, whose place of suspension is +notoriously and traditionally lofty. Gertrude Lodge, coming +here for the cure of her withered arm by <a +name="page75"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 75</span>the agency of +the dead man’s touch, observed, as all could then not help +observing, those “three rectangular lines against the +sky,” which indicated the coming execution and the +morrow’s exhibition, to be followed by the merry-makings of +Hang Fair. When she enquired the hour of execution, she was +told: “The same as usual—twelve o’clock, or as +soon after as the London mail-coach gets in. We always wait +for that, in case of a reprieve.”</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image75" href="images/p75.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Dorchester Gaol" +title= +"Dorchester Gaol" + src="images/p75.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>In Dorchester Gaol—we have no space here for those +merely actual persons of flesh and blood who have been +incarcerated, or who have suffered in it—those more real +characters of fiction, Boldwood and Marston were confined; and +hence the Shottsford watchmaker of <i>The Three Strangers</i>, +lying under sentence of death, escaped along the downs to Higher +Crowstairs, where, while sheltering in the <a +name="page76"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 76</span>ingle-nook of +the cottage, two other strangers, one of them the hangman deputed +to execute the demands of the law upon him on the morrow, take +shelter from the weather.</p> +<p>To follow this gloomy train a little longer, the veritable +Hangman’s Cottage, home of this erstwhile busy functionary, +at a time when Dorchester demanded the whole time and energies of +a Jack Ketch, and not a very occasional visit from one common to +the whole kingdom, may be seen, at the foot of Glydepath Lane, in +a fine damp situation near the river. It is one of a tiny +group of heavily thatched old rustic cottages built of grouted +flint and chalk, faced and patched with red brick, and held +together with iron ties, so that in their old age they shall not, +some night, altogether collapse and deposit their inhabitants +among the potatoes, the peas, and cabbages of their fertile +gardens. Dorchester paid its hangman a regular salary, and +in the intervals between his more important business, he was +under engagement to perform those minor punishments of whipping +and scourging, of putting in the stocks, and of pillorying, by +whose plentiful administration Old England was made the +“Merry England” of our forefathers. Let not the +reader, however, seek a covert satire here. It is not to be +gainsaid that it was a “Merry England,” for the times +were so brutal that, in all such degrading and pitiful spectacles +as these, the populace took the keenest delight. Sufficient +for the day—! and those who made merry did not stop to +consider that they who were now spectators might soon very likely +afford in their own persons the same spectacle.</p> +<p>Miserable times! Proof of them, do you need <a +name="page77"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 77</span>seek it, is +to be found in the Dorchester Museum, where the leaden weights, +boldly inscribed “<span +class="GutSmall">MERCY</span>,” are pointed out as the +contribution, years ago, of an exceptionally tender-hearted +governor of the gaol to a more pitiful method of ending the +condemned man who was to die for his crime of arson.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image77" href="images/p77.jpg"> +<img alt= +"The Hangman’s Cottage, Dorchester" +title= +"The Hangman’s Cottage, Dorchester" + src="images/p77.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>The man was of unusually light weight, and, as those were the +times when men really were slowly and painfully hanged and choked +by degrees, before criminals were given a drop and their necks +broken, it was thought a kindly thing on the part of this +governor that he <a name="page78"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +78</span>should have provided these heavy weights, to attach to +this particular victim’s feet and so help to shorten his +misery.</p> +<p>This museum it was that Lucetta, keen to get the girl out of +the way, suggested for Elizabeth Jane’s entertainment; with +affected enthusiasm and a good deal of veiled womanly sarcasm at +the expense of antiquities, describing how it contained +“crowds of interesting things—skeletons, teeth, old +pots and pans, ancient boots and shoes, birds’ +eggs—all charmingly instructive.”</p> +<p>But enough of such things, let us to other quarters.</p> +<p>Looking on to the cheerful and prosperous South Street from +the corner of Durngate Street is the substantial “grey +façade” of Lucetta’s house, where lived +Henchard’s lady-love, whose affections were so readily +transferable. The lower portion of this, the “High +Place Hall” of the story, has suffered a transformation +into business premises, but the resounding alleyways of Durngate +Street and neighbouring lanes are as gloomy as those spots are +described. “At night the forms of passengers were +patterned by the lamps in black shadows upon the pale +walls,” and so they are still.</p> +<p>But the description of Lucetta’s house in those pages is +a composite picture; a good deal of it deriving from an old +mansion in another part of the town. This will be found by +taking a narrow thoroughfare leading out of the north side of +High West Street, and called, in different parts of its course, +Glydepath Lane and Glydepath Street. In this quiet byway is +the early eighteenth-century mansion known as Colyton House, +sometime a town <a name="page79"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +79</span>residence of the Churchill family, and so named from the +little Devonshire town of Colyton, near which is situated Ash, +that old dwelling, now a farmhouse, whence the historic +Churchills sprang.</p> +<p>Readily to be seen, in a blank wall, is the long-filled-in +archway, with the dreadful keystone mask, alluded to in the pages +of <i>The Mayor of Casterbridge</i>.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image79" href="images/p79.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Colyton House, Dorchester" +title= +"Colyton House, Dorchester" + src="images/p79.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>“Originally the mask had exhibited a comic leer, as +could still be discerned; but generations of Casterbridge boys +had thrown stones at the mask, aiming at its open mouth; and the +blows thereof had chipped off the lips and jaws as if they had +been eaten away by disease.” Its appearance is indeed +of a ghastly leprous nature, infinitely shuddery.</p> +<p>At this end of the town, out upon the Charminster road is the +great Roman encampment of Poundbury, or, locally, +“Pummery,” where Henchard spread <a +name="page80"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 80</span>that feast, +deserted by those for whom it was intended, in favour of the +rival entertainment in the West Walks, prepared by the hateful +Farfrae, that paragon of all the business and higher virtues, +whom the reader perversely, but not unnaturally, detests. +“Roman” it has been in this last passage declared, +but, in truth, its origin has been as widely disputed as that of +Weatherbury Castle, where the varying theories arouse Mr. +Hardy’s sarcasm so markedly. It lies without the site +of the Roman walls of Durnovaria, and probably formed some +advanced outpost or great camp in the long years of the Roman +occupation of Britain, before the establishment of security and +the growth of their towns. Those Roman walls are now for +the most part gone and their sites were long ago planted with +avenues, now growing aged and past their prime, and ceased to be +that clean-cut barrier between <i>urbs</i> and <i>rure</i> they +formed of old, when Dorchester of pre-railway days had not grown +too big for that girdle the Romans had set about her: a girdle +not too constrictive for the needs of the Middle Age, nor even in +the eighteenth century with any suspicion of tight-lacing, but +all too compressive soon after the coaches had given way to +trains, and steel rails and steam along them had sent up the +birthrate. A notable passage in <i>The Mayor of +Casterbridge</i> tells how there were not, quite a little while +ago, any suburbs here, in the modern sense, nor any gradual +fusion of town and country. “The farmer’s boy +could sit under his barleymow, and pitch a stone into the window +of the town-clerk; reapers at work among the sheaves nodded to +acquaintances standing on the pavement-corner; the red-robed +judge, when <a name="page81"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +81</span>he condemned a sheep stealer, pronounced sentence to the +tune of ‘Baa,’ that floated in at the window from the +remainder of the flock browsing hard by.”</p> +<p>But those bounds have in several places been leaped, and, in +especial where the South Walk runs, modern villas have redly +replaced the golden grain or the green pastures. Changed +manners and customs have brought about this alteration, quite as +much as increased population. The four old traditional +streets of the town, together with their more immediate +offshoots, have been resigned more exclusively to business than +of yore, and made less a residence. The butchers, the +bakers, the candlestick-makers, who would once have scorned to +live anywhere else than over “the shop,” will now not +very often condescend to make their homes in the upper stages of +their “stores” or “establishments,” or by +what other pretty names modern finesse elects to describe shops +and counters and tills and such like things by which tradespeople +become rich.</p> +<p>And, by that same token, the business premises thus deserted +for snug suburban villas, are themselves changing. One +could never, in modern times, have strictly called Dorchester +generally picturesque, in the prominent circumstances of those +four main streets: repeated conflagrations that destroyed most of +the really old and interesting houses forbade that, and replaced +thatch and barge-boarded gables with plain brick fronts, severe +in unornamental rectangular windows, and ending on the skyline +with unimaginative straight copings. But the latest +manifestations of these times, when they say business is a +struggle and all trades alike carried on less for the profit of +the purveyor, than for the good of <a name="page82"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 82</span>the purchaser, are expensive carved +stone and brick frontages, with good artistic features. As +art in this country only spells much expenditure of good money +and as building operations are always costly, it is a little +difficult to square all these developments with the talk of +“hard times.” South Street, in especial, is +being grandly transformed, and “Napper’s Mite,” +the crouching row of almshouses, built from the benefaction of +the good Sir Robert Napper, in 1615, made to look additionally +humble by newly risen tall buildings. But the town +authorities have not yet removed the old rusticated stone obelisk +that stands in Cornhill, in the centre of the town, where High +East and High West Streets, and North and South Streets +meet. It serves the multum-in-parvo purposes of a pump, a +lamp-standard, and a leaning-stock for Dorchester’s weary +or born-tired, and is moreover a landmark. But the two +dumpy little houses at the corner, which were properly dumpy and +humble and—so to speak—knew their place, and abased +themselves in the presence of their betters—that is to say, +in the contiguity of St. Peter’s across the road—have +been rebuilt, with the result that their tall upstanding +pretentiousness detracts not a little from the height of that +“grizzled tower.”</p> +<p>And so, turning to the left at this corner, we leave +Dorchester for Bridport, along High West Street, the quietest of +all these thoroughfares, and looking rather “out of +it,” and somewhat glad of that fact, in a dignified, +exclusive way, typified by its aristocratic old houses, and its +old County Hall. It is true there are a few shops in High +Street, but they are by no means pushful shops. They <a +name="page83"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 83</span>never make +“alarming sacrifices,” nor sell off. Indeed, +were I not fearful of offending susceptibility, I might declare a +belief that they never sell anything at all, and are kept by +“grown-ups,” not grown tired of playing at shops when +they did so arrive at years supposed to be those of +discretion. Here is a quiet shop—where they will +doubtless sell you something, if you really enter and firmly +insist upon it—occupying one of the few really old and +picturesque houses in the main thoroughfare; it is the house +“by tradition” occupied by the infamous Judge +Jeffreys, when visiting Dorchester on the business of that +special occasion, the Bloody Assize, holden to try the unhappy +wretches arraigned for their part in Monmouth’s Rebellion +of 1685. The old house bears an inscription to this +effect. Over three hundred prisoners faced the judge at +that awful time, and two hundred and ninety received sentence of +death. Of these the number actually executed was +seventy-four, and, as the old gossip at the “Three +Mariners” tells, portions of their bodies were gibbeted in +various parts of the county, “different j’ints sent +about the country like butcher’s meat.”</p> +<p>And so we leave Dorchester and its, on the whole, grim +memories, along an avenue, fellow to that by which the town was +entered.</p> +<h2><a name="page84"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +84</span>CHAPTER IX</h2> +<p style="text-align: center" class="gutsumm">SWANAGE</p> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> name of Swanage shares with +that of Swansea, the honour of being, perhaps, the most poetic +that any seaside resort ever owned. It is a corruption of +the Danish name of “Swanic,” or +“Swanwich,” and there seems to be no reason to +doubt—although there exists a school of antiquarians +sceptical enough to doubt it—that the place was then, as +its name indicates, a place of swans. Your modern +antiquary, disgusted at the childish legends once everywhere +accepted as sober historical facts, rushes to the other extreme, +and, although a thing be obvious, will not allow its obviousness, +unless supported by documentary or other tangible evidence. +He must needs disregard the self-evident, and delve deeply and +unavailingly in attempts to prove that “things are not what +they seem.”</p> +<p>Conjectures that there was at that time a royal swannery here +are based upon the known fondness of royal personages for +preserving that bird, once thought a table delicacy, and upon the +existence from ancient times of the famous Abbotsbury swannery, +along this same coast. But it is needless here to labour +the point; and although the little stream, more and more +pollutedly with every year <a name="page85"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 85</span>of the extension of modern Swanage, +still flows down into the sea under the name of the Swan Brook, +the argument supported by it in favour of the obvious origin of +the place-name shall be no further pursued.</p> +<p>But the surrounding quarries have for many centuries past +given a very different character to Swanage than that of a +village with a marshy creek inhabited by swans. Few places +ever proclaimed the industries by which they lived more +prominently than did this little port, until well within recent +recollection. A colliery town no more insistently obtrudes +the circumstances by which it earns its livelihood than Swanage +displayed evidences of its cleanly trade and craft of +stone-working and stone-exporting.</p> +<p>The varieties of stone from the quarries to the rear of +Swanage are among the most famous building and decorative stones +in the world; for here we are at the gates of Isle of Purbeck, +where, not only the oolitic limestone of the same nature as +“Portland stone” is quarried, but that (to +antiquaries at least) far more generally known material, +“Purbeck marble,” as well. No ancient church or +cathedral of any considerable size or elaboration was considered +complete without shafts and font and other decorative features of +Purbeck marble, sometimes polished, at other times left in its +native state; and thus, from very early times until the beginning +of the sixteenth century, when more strikingly coloured and +patterned foreign marbles began to find their way into England, +Swanage in particular, and Purbeck in general, enjoyed an amazing +prosperity.</p> +<p><a name="page86"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 86</span>Swanage +in Mr. Hardy’s pages is “Knollsea,” and is +described in <i>The Hand of Ethelberta</i> as a +village:—“Knollsea,” we learn, “was a +seaside village lying snug within two headlands, as between a +finger and thumb.” A very true simile, as a glance on +the map, upon the configuration of Swanage Bay, will satisfy +those curious in the exactness or otherwise of literary +images. But time has very rapidly vitiated the justness of +what follows:—“Everybody in the parish who was not a +boatman was a quarrier, unless he were the gentleman who owned +half the property and had been a quarryman, or the other +gentleman who owned the other half and had been to +sea.”</p> +<p>“The knowledge of the inhabitants was of the same +special sort as their pursuits. The quarrymen in white +fustian understood practical geology, the laws and accidents of +dips, faults, and cleavage, far better than the ways of the world +and mammon; the seafaring men, in Guernsey frocks, had a clearer +notion of Alexandria, Constantinople, the Cape, and the Indies +than of any inland town in their own country. This, for +them, consisted of a busy portion, the Channel, where they lived +and laboured, and a dull portion, the vague unexplored miles of +interior at the back of the ports, which they seldom thought +of.”</p> +<p>This charming picture of an out-of-the world place remained, +very little blurred by change, until well on into the +’80’s of the nineteenth century, when it occurred to +exploiting railway folk that the time was ripe for the +construction of a branch railway from Wareham. With the +opening of that line the primitive houses, and the equally <a +name="page87"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 87</span>primitive +people who lived in them, suffered a change almost as sudden and +complete as though a harlequin had waved his wand over their +heads.</p> +<p>There was indeed something exceptionally primitive in the +Swanage people. They were chiefly quarrymen, and like all +quarry folk, mining the great blocks of stone from mother earth, +a strangely reserved and isolated race. A man who, felling +timber, might conceivably remain all his life mentally detached +from his occupation, following it only mechanically, could not +long in these quarries, rich in the embalmed stoniness of myriads +of humble creatures living in the palæozoic age, remain +unaffected by his surroundings. An imaginative man might, +not inaptly, conceive himself as a phenomenally gigantic giant +working in some vast petrified graveyard among the petrifactions +of a world infinitely little; and, as the dyer’s hand is +subdued to the dye he works in, and—a less classic +allusion—as the photographer acquires a permanent stain +from his collodion, he could scarce escape the almost inevitable +mental twist resulting from the surroundings.</p> +<p>And as they were, and in some measure still are, individually +peculiar, so collectively they retain their exclusiveness. +Still, with every recurrent Shrove Tuesday, their guild meets at +Corfe, under the presidency of warden and steward; and even in +these days it is not open for an outsider to become a Purbeck +quarryman. It is an industry only to be followed by +patrimony and by due admission into its membership in the +prescribed manner, which is that of appearing at the annual court +with a penny loaf in one hand, a pot of beer in the other, and a +<a name="page88"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 88</span>sum of six +shillings and eightpence in the pocket, ready to be duly paid +down.</p> +<p>With all the changes that have overtaken Swanage, who knows +nowadays, save very old folk, that Swanage people are, or were, +locally “Swanage Turks”? When—outside +Swanage, of course—you asked why so named, you were apt to +be told “Tarks, we al’us carls ’em, ’cos +they don’t know nawthen about anything.” The +informant in this particular instance was a Poole man. None +could possibly have brought this charge of comprehensive and +thorough-going ignorance against the natives of Poole, for that +ancient port was a sink of iniquity, and inhabited, if we are to +believe the history books—which there is no reason we +should not do—by ruffians who were by no means unspotted of +the world, but had plumbed the depths of every wickedness. +Since Swanage has become the terminus of a branch railway and +become a seaside resort, its “Turks” have acquired a +very considerable amount of worldly wisdom, and can argue and +chop logic with you, as well as the best.</p> +<p>To those who knew and loved old Swanage, the change that has +come with its tardy accessibility by rail is woeful, but to those +who have not so known and loved, I daresay it seems, by contrast +with Bournemouth, a place strangely undeveloped. The +trouble with the first-named is that development has been all too +rapid, and has utterly robbed Swanage of its immemorial character +as the port whence the famous Purbeck stone was shipped. +Alas! pretentious houses of a tall and terrible ugliness now +stand in the middle of the bay, on the shore immediately in front +of what used merely by <a name="page89"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 89</span>courtesy to be called “the +town,” but is now actually grown to that status. The +“bankers”—rows upon rows of stacked slabs of +Purbeck stone that used to form so striking a feature of the +shore, and were wont, to a stranger seeing them first on a +moonlit night, to look so grisly, as though this were some +close-packed seashore cemetery—the circumstance of +facetious irony—the grown prosperity of Swanage has built +banks, where the Swanage tradesfolk doubtless deposit heavily +from the profits of their summer trading.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image89" href="images/p89.jpg"> +<img alt= +"The Old Church, Swanage" +title= +"The Old Church, Swanage" + src="images/p89.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>In the distance, along the curving shore of Swanage Bay, there +has arisen with the development of the Durlstone estate, a grand +hotel, and in the <a name="page90"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +90</span>town itself—the folly of it!—uninteresting +modern commercial buildings have replaced the quaint old cottages +that, built as they were, in a peculiarly local fashion, with +great stone slabs and rude stone tiling, had their like nowhere +else. Now, the rows of newly arisen streets are such as +have their counterparts in every town, and you can dine +<i>à la carte</i> or <i>table-d’hôte</i> at +the many hotels and boarding-houses, as their announcements +boldly inform the visitor, quite as elaborately as in great +cities. All, without doubt, very refined and up to date, +but perhaps not to all of us, who keep the simple and robustious +appetites of our beginnings, so pleasing a change from the time +(of which Kingsley speaks) when a simple glass of ale and a crust +of bread and cheese at a rustic inn was all one wished, and +certainly all one could have got.</p> +<p>Of those times there are but little “islands,” so +to speak, left in the surging mass of modern brick and +stone. One of them is the ancient church, whose tower is +thought to be Saxon—the church where Ethelberta Petherwin, +in <i>The Hand of Ethelberta</i>, marries Lord Mountclere. +Another, tucked away behind the Town Hall, and only to be with +some difficulty discovered, is the old village lock-up. No +dread Bastille this, but an affair resembling a stone tool-house, +twelve feet by eight, and lighted only by the holes in the +decaying woodwork of its nail-studded door. It was built in +1803, “erected” as the old inscription tells us, +“for the prevention of Wickedness and Vice by the Friends +of Religion and Good Order.” The inference to be +drawn from the small size of this place of incarceration is that +the “Wickedness and Vice” of Swanage were <a +name="page91"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 91</span>on a very +insignificant scale. Although Swanage has grown so greatly, +and now owns a very fine and large police-station, it is not to +be inferred that the delinquencies have increased in proportion, +but rather that officialism has made a larger growth, and that +Swanage, like poor old England in general, is over-governed.</p> +<p>Among other outstanding features of Swanage, conferred upon it +by the late Mr. Mowlem, of the London contracting firm of Mowlem +and Burt, is the Wellington Clock Tower, the Gothic pinnacled +structure now ornamenting the foreshore, in what were once the +private gardens of “the Grove.” But “the +Grove” has now, like many another seashore estate, been cut +up, and new villas now take the place of the older +exclusiveness.</p> +<p>The Clock Tower, one of the many memorials to the great Duke +of Wellington, stood, until about 1860, on the south side of +London Bridge, but was removed when the roadway was widened at +that point. Once removed, the good folk of Southwark were +at a loss what to do with it, and so solved their difficulty by +presenting its stones to Mr. Mowlem, the contractor. They +thought he had been saddled with a “white elephant,” +and chuckled accordingly; but they little knew their man. +He considered the relic “just the thing” for his +native town of Swanage, and accepting it with the greatest +alacrity, despatched it hither, and presented it to his friend +Mr. Docwra, of “the Grove.” This poor old +monument to martial glory has suffered of late, for its pinnacle +has been blown down and replaced by a copper sheathing very like +a dish-cover.</p> +<h2><a name="page92"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +92</span>CHAPTER X</h2> +<p style="text-align: center" class="gutsumm">SWANAGE TO CORFE +CASTLE</p> +<p><span class="smcap">That</span> pilgrim who, whether on foot +or by cycle, shall elect to trace these landmarks, will find the +road out of Swanage to Corfe, by way of Langton Matravers and +Kingston a heart-breaking stretch of stony hills, whose blinding +glare under a summer sun is provocative of ophthalmia, and whose +severities of stone walling, in place of green hedges, recall the +scenery of Ireland. Herston, too, the unlovely outskirt of +Swanage, is not encouraging. But the world—it is a +truism—is made up of all sorts, and here, as elsewhere, +rewards come after trials.</p> +<p>Langton Matravers, on the ridge-road, is, just as one might +suppose from the stony nature of Purbeck, a village of stone +houses, and very grim and unornamental ones too. Nine +hundred souls live here, and so long as the “Langton +freestone” won from its quarries is in good demand, are +happy enough, although subject to every extremity of +weather. The “Matravers” in the place-name +derives from the old manorial lords, the Maltravers family, who +dropped the “l” out of their name some time after one +of their race, deeply implicated in the barbarous murder of +Edward II., proved himself a very “bad Travers” +indeed, and so made his name peculiarly descriptive.</p> +<p><a name="page93"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 93</span>Passing +Gallows Gore Cottages—what a melodramatic address to +own!—we come to Kingston village, along just such a road, +with just such a view as that described in <i>The Hand of +Ethelberta</i>, although, to be sure, she went, on that +donkey-ride to Corfe, by another and very roundabout route, +through Ulwell Gap, over Nine Barrow Down. Ordinary folk +would have gone by the ordinary road; but then, you see, +Ethelberta was a poetess, and +“unconventionality—almost eccentricity—was +<i>de rigueur</i>” for such an one. Hence also that +unconventional, and uncomfortable, seat on the donkey’s +back.</p> +<p>From this point Corfe Castle is exquisitely seen, down below +the ridge, but situated on the course of the minor, but still +mighty, backbone that bisects the Isle. From hence, too, +the country may be seen spread out like a map, “domains +behind domains, parishes by the score, harbours, fir-woods and +little inland seas mixing curiously together.” +Dipping down out of sight of all these distant Lands of Promise, +among the richly wooded lanes of Kingston, the glaring limestone +road is exchanged for shaded ways, where sunlight only filters +through in patches of gold, looking to the imaginative as though +some giant had come this way and dropped the contents of his +money-bags. Thatched cottages, tall elms, and old-fashioned +roadside gardens are the features of Kingston; but above all +these, geographically and in every other respect, is the great +and magnificent modern church built for Lord Eldon and completed +in 1880, after seven years’ work and a vast amount of money +had been expended upon it. It was designed by +Street—that same “obliterator of historic +records”—who at Fawley <a name="page94"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 94</span>Magna earned Mr. Hardy’s +satire; but here were no records to obliterate. Certain +reminiscences of the architect’s early studies of the early +Gothic of the Rhine churches may be traced here, in the exterior +design of the apsidal chancel, strongly resembling that of +Fawley, but one would hesitate to apply the opprobrious term of +“German-Gothic” to this, as a whole. Its +intention is Early English, but the general effect is rather of a +Norman spirit informed with Early English details; an effect +greatly accentuated by the heaviness and bulk of the central +tower, intended by Lord Eldon to be a prominent landmark, and +fulfilling that intention by the sacrifice of proportion to the +rest of the building. Cruciform plan, size, and general +elaboration render this a church particularly unfitted for so +small and so rustic a village. Had its needs been studied, +rather than the ecclesiological tastes of the third Lord Eldon, +the little church built many years ago for the first earl, the +great lawyer-lord, by Repton, would have sufficed; although to be +sure it has all the faults of the first attempts at reviving +Gothic.</p> +<p>The Earl of Eldon purchased the manor of Kingston and the +residence of Encombe from William Morton Pitt in 1807. +Here, in that little church built by him, he lies, beside his +“Bessie,” that Bessie Surtees with whom he, then +plain and penniless John Scott, eloped from the old house on +Sandhill, Newcastle-on-Tyne, in 1772. His house of Encombe, +the “Enkworth Court,” of <i>The Hand of +Ethelberta</i>, lies deep down in the glen of Encombe, approached +by a long road gradually descending into the cup-like crater by +the only expedient of <a name="page95"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 95</span>winding round it. Think of all +the beautiful road scenery you have ever seen or heard of, and +you will not have seen or been told of anything more beautiful in +its especial kind of beauty than this sequestered road down into +Lord Eldon’s retreat. <a name="page96"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 96</span>Jagged white cliffs here and there +project themselves out of the steep banks of grass and moss above +the way, draped with a profusion of small-leaved ground-ivy and a +wealth of hart’s-tongue ferns, and trees romantically shade +the whole. An obelisk erected by the great statesman, on a +bold bluff, to the memory of his brother, Lord Stowell, adds an +element of romance to the scene, and then, plunging into a final +mass of tangled woodland, the grey stone elevation of the house +is seen, ghostlike, fronting a gravel drive, in its silence and +drawn blinds looking less like the home of some fairy princess +than the residence of a misanthrope, who has retired beyond the +reach of the world and drawn his blinds, with the hope of +persuading any who may possibly find their way here that he is +not at home.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image95" href="images/p95.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Encombe" +title= +"Encombe" + src="images/p95.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>“Enkworth Court” was, we are told, “a house +in which Pugin would have torn his hair,” and Encombe +certainly can possess no charms for amateurs of Gothic. Nor +can it possibly delight students of the ancient Greek and Roman +orders, for its architecture has classic intentions without being +classical, and heaviness without dignity. But its interior, +if it likewise does not appeal to a cultivated taste in matters +connected with the mother of all the arts, is exceptionally +comfortable. Here the old Chancellor, over eighty years of +age, spent most of his declining days. “His sporting +days were over; he had but little interest in gardening or +farming; and his only reading, beside the newspaper, was a +chapter in the Bible. His mornings he spent in an +elbow-chair by the fireside in his study—called his +shop—which was ornamented <a name="page97"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 97</span>by portraits of his deceased master, +George III. and his living companion, Pincher, a poodle +dog.”</p> +<p>From Kingston to Corfe Castle, the bourne of innumerable +summer visitors, is two miles. The first glimpse of town +and castle is one which clearly shows how aptly the site of them +obtained its original name of Corvesgate, from the Anglo-Saxon +<i>ceorfan</i>, to cut. The site was so named long before +castle or town were erected here, and referred to the passages +cut or carved through the bold range of hills by the little river +Corfe and its tributaries. Those clefts are clearly +distinguished from here and from the main road between Corfe and +Swanage, and are notched twice, so deeply into the stony range, +that the eminence on which the castle stands is less like a part +of one continuous chain of hills than an isolated conical hill +neighboured by lengthy ridges.</p> +<p>On that islanded hill, shouldered by taller neighbours, the +castle was built, because at this point it so effectually guarded +these passes from the shores of Purbeck to the inland +regions. The position in these days seems a singular one, +for from the upper slopes of those neighbours it is possible to +look down into the castle and observe its every detail, but such +things mattered little in days before artillery.</p> +<p>A first impression of Corfe, if it be summer, is an impression +of dazzling whiteness; resolved, on a nearer approach, into the +pure white of the road and of the occasional repairs and +restorations of the stone-built streets, the grey white of +buildings past their first novelty, and the dead greyness of the +roofing slabs of stone. There is little colour in Corfe +when June has gone. The golden-green <a +name="page98"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 98</span>lichens and +houseleeks of spring have been sucked dry by the summer heats and +turned to withered rustiness, and even the grass of the +pyramidical hill on which the castle keep is reared has little +more than an exhausted sage-green hue.</p> +<p>“Corvsgate Castle,” as we find it styled in <i>The +Hand of Ethelberta</i>, is frequently the scene, at such a time +of year, of meetings like that of the “Imperial +Association” in that story. All that is to be known +respecting these ruins, “the meagre stumps remaining from +flourishing bygone centuries,” is the common property of +all interested in historical antiquities, but there is something, +it may be supposed, in revisiting the oft-visited and in +retelling the old tale, which bids defiance to <i>ennui</i> and +precludes satiety, even although the President’s address be +a paraphrase of the last archæological paper, and that the +echo of its predecessor, and so forth, in endless +<i>diminuendo</i>:</p> +<blockquote><p>And smaller fleas have lesser fleas,<br /> +And so <i>ad infinitum</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>“Carfe,” as any Wessex man of the soil will name +it, just as horses are ‘harses’ and hornets become +‘harnets’ in his ancient and untutored pronunciation, +is, as already hinted, a place of stone buildings, where brick, +although not unknown, is remarkable. Stone from foundation +to roof, and stone slabs of immense size for the roofs +themselves. In a place where building-stone is and has been +so readily found it is, of course, in the nature of things to +find the remains of a castle that must have been exceptionally +large and strong, and here <a name="page100"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 100</span>they are, peering over the rooftops +of the town from whatever point of view you choose. The +castle is as essential a feature in all views of the town as it +is in history; and rightly too, for had it not been for that +fortress there would have been no town. It is a town by +courtesy and ancient estate, and a village by size; a village +that does not grow and has so far escaped the desecration of +modern streets. The market cross, recently restored to +perfection from a shattered stump, and the town hall both declare +it to have been a town, as does, or did, the existence of a +mayor, but such things have long become vanities. The +return of two members to Parliament, a privilege Corfe enjoyed +until reform put an end to it in 1832, proved nothing, for +Parliamentary representation was no more fixed on the principle +of comparative electorates than the representation of Ireland is +now in the House of Commons.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image99" href="images/p99.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Corfe Castle" +title= +"Corfe Castle" + src="images/p99.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>The temperance interest need by no means be shocked when it is +said that the most interesting feature of Corfe, next to the +castle, is its inn. The church does not count; for the body +of it has been uninterestingly rebuilt, and only the fine tower, +of Perpendicular date, remains. The inns, however, combine +picturesqueness with the solid British comforts of old times and +the less substantial amenities of the new. Here, looking +upon the “Bankes Arms,” with its highly elaborate +heraldic sign, you can have no manner of doubt as to what family +is still paramount in Corfe, and I think, perhaps, that to +shelter behind so gorgeous an achievement even reflects a halo +upon the guest; while if the “Greyhound” can confer +no such satisfaction, its unusual picturesqueness, <a +name="page101"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 101</span>with that +charming feature of a porch projecting over the pavement and +owning a capacious room poised above the comings and goings, the +commerce and gossipings of the people, can at least give a +visitor the charm of what, although an ancient feature of the +place, is at least a novelty to him.</p> +<p>The three cylindrical stone columns of plethoric figure which +support this porch and its room are more generally useful than +the architect who placed them here, some two hundred and eighty +years ago, probably ever imagined they would be. <i>He</i> +devised them for the support of his gazebo above, but more than +twenty generations of Wessex folk have found them convenient for +leaning-stocks, and the comfortable support they give has further +lengthened many a long argument which, had all contributing +parties stood supported only by their own two natural posts that +carry the bodily superstructure, would have been earlier +concluded. The progress of an argument, discussion, +narration, or negotiation under such unequal conditions is to be +watched with interest. Time probably will forbid one being +followed from beginning to end; but to be a spectator of one of +these comedies from the middle onwards is sufficient. The +length it has already been played may generally be pretty +accurately estimated by the state of weariness or impatience +exhibited by that party to it who is not supported by the +pillar. The “well, as I was saying” of the one +enjoying the leaning-stock, discloses, like the parson’s +“secondly, Dear brethren,” the fact that the +discourse is well on the way, but the same thing may be gathered +by those out <a name="page102"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +102</span>of earshot, in the manœuvres of the less +fortunate of the two, the one who is supporting his own +bulk. He stands upright, hands behind his back, while +swaying his walking stick; then he leans his weight to one side +upon it, first (if he be a stout man, whom it behoves to exercise +caution) carefully selecting a safe crevice in the jointing of +the pavement, as a bearing for the ferule of his ash-plant; then, +growing weary of this attitude, he repeats the process on the +other side, changing after a while to the expedient of a sideways +stress, halfway up the body, by straining the walking stick +horizontally against the wall. Then, having exhausted all +possible movements, he takes a bulky silver watch from his +pocket, and affects to find time unexpectedly ahead of him; and +when this resort is reached the spectacle generally comes to a +conclusion.</p> +<p>But it is time to follow Ethelberta into the +castle:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Ethelberta crossed the bridge over the +moat, and rode under the first archway into the outer ward. +As she had expected, not a soul was here. The arrow-slits, +portcullis-grooves, and staircases met her eye as familiar +friends, for in her childhood she had once paid a visit to the +spot. Ascending the green incline and through another arch +into the second ward, she still pressed on, till at last the ass +was unable to clamber an inch further. Here she dismounted, +and tying him to a stone which projected like a fang from a raw +edge of wall, performed the remainder of the journey on +foot. Once among the towers above, she became so interested +in the windy corridors, mildewed dungeons, and the tribe <a +name="page103"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 103</span>of daws +peering invidiously upon her from overhead, that she forgot the +flight of time.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The ruins that Ethelberta and the “Imperial +Association” had come to inspect owe their heaped and +toppling ruination to that last great armed convulsion in our +insular history, the Civil War, whose two greatest personalities +were Charles I. and Oliver Cromwell. Until that time the +proud fortress had stood unharmed, as stalwart as when built in +Norman times.</p> +<p>The history of Corfe before those times is very obscure, and +no one has yet discovered whether the first recorded incident in +it took place at a mere hunting-lodge here or at the gates of a +fortress. That incident, the first and most atrocious of +all the atrocious deeds of blood wrought at Corfe, was the murder +of King Edward “the Martyr,” in <span +class="GutSmall">A.D.</span> 978, by his stepmother, Queen +Elfrida, anxious to secure the throne for her own son. The +boy—he was only in his nineteenth year—had drawn rein +here, on his return alone from hunting, and was drinking at the +door from a goblet handed him by Elfrida herself when she stabbed +him to the heart. His horse, startled at the attack, darted +away, dragging the body by the stirrups, and thus, battered and +lifeless, it was found.</p> +<p>Built, or rebuilt, in the time of the Conqueror, Corfe Castle +was early besieged, and in that passage gave a good account of +itself and justified its existence, for King Stephen failed to +take it by force or to starve the garrison out. How long he +may have been pleased to sit down before it we do not know, for +the approach of a relieving force <a name="page104"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 104</span>caused him to pack his baggage and +be off. Strong, however, as it was even then, it was +continually under enlargement in the reigns of Henry II., Henry +III., and Edward I., and had a better right to the oft-used boast +of being impregnable than most other fortresses.</p> +<h2><a name="page105"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +105</span>CHAPTER XI</h2> +<p style="text-align: center" class="gutsumm">CORFE CASTLE</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Like</span> some cruel ogre of folk-lore +the Castle of Corfe has drunk deep of blood. Its strength +kept prisoners safely guarded, as well as foes at arm’s +length, and many a despairing wretch has been hurried through the +now ruined gatehouse, to the muttered “God help him!” +of some compassionate warder. Through the great open Outer +Ward and steeply uphill between the two gloomy circular +drum-towers across the second ward, and thence to the Dungeon +Tower at the further left-hand corner of the stronghold, they +were taken and thrust into some vile place of little ease, to be +imprisoned for a lifetime, to be starved to death, or more +mercifully ended by the assassin’s dagger. +Twenty-four knights captured in Brittany, in arms against King +John, in aid of his nephew, Arthur, were imprisoned here, in +1202, and twenty-two of them met death by starvation in some foul +underground hold. Prince Arthur, as every one knows, was +blinded by orders of the ruthless king, and Arthur’s +sister, Eleanor, was thrown into captivity, first here and then +at Bristol, where, after forty years, she died. Thus did +monarchs dispose of rivals, and those who aided them, in the +“good old days,” and other monarchs, <a +name="page106"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 106</span>not so +ferocious, or not so well able to take care of themselves, stood +in danger of tasting the same fare, as in the case of Edward II. +imprisoned here and murdered in the dungeons of Berkeley +Castle. Sympathies go out to the unhappy captives and +victims, but a knowledge of these things tells us that they would +have done the same, had opportunity offered and the positions +been reversed.</p> +<p>This stronghold held many a humbler prisoner, among them those +who had offended in one or other of the easy ways of offence in +this, the King’s deer-forest of Purbeck; and many others +immured for mere caprice. The place must have reeked with +blood and been strewn with bones like a hyæna’s +lair.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p106a.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Corfe Castle" +title= +"Corfe Castle" + src="images/p106a.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>So much for the domestic history of Corfe Castle. Its +last great appearance in the history of the nation was during the +civil wars of King and Parliament, when it justified the design +of its builders, and proved the excellence of its defences by +successfully withstanding two sieges; falling in the second +solely by treachery. It had by that time passed through +many hands, and had come at last to the Bankes family, by whom it +is still owned. It was only eight years before the first +siege in this war that the property had been acquired by the Lord +Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, Sir John Bankes, who purchased +it from the widow of that celebrated lawyer, Sir Edward Coke, the +Coke of “Coke upon Littleton.”</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p106b.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Corfe Castle" +title= +"Corfe Castle" + src="images/p106b.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>When the civil war broke out, Sir John Bankes, called to the +King’s side at York, left his wife and children at their +home of Kingston Lacy, near Wimborne Minster, whence, for +security from the <a name="page107"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +107</span>covert sneers and petty annoyances offered them by the +once humbly subservient townsfolk, not slow to note the trend of +affairs, they removed in the autumn of 1642 to Corfe Castle, +where they spent the winter unmolested.</p> +<p>Although they thus sought shelter here, they probably had no +idea of the heights to which the tide of rebellion would rise, +and could scarce have anticipated being besieged; but the +Parliamentary leaders in the district had their eyes upon a +fortress which, already obsolete and the subject of antiquarian +curiosity, could yet be made a place of strength, as the sequel +was presently to show.</p> +<p>The first attempt to gain possession of the castle was by a +subterfuge, ingenious and plausible enough. The Mayor of +Corfe had from time immemorial held a stag hunt annually, on May +Day, and it was thought that, if on this occasion some additional +parties of horse were to attend, and to seize the stronghold +under colour of paying a visit, the thing would be done with +ease. So probably it would, but for the keen feminine +intuition of Lady Bankes, who closed the gates and mounted a +guard upon the entrance-towers, so that when those huntsmen came +and demanded surrender, scarcely in the manner of visitors, they +were at once denied admission, and effectually unmasked. +The revolutionary committee sitting at Poole then considered it +advisable to despatch a body of sailors, who appeared before the +castle, early one morning, to demand the surrender of four small +dismounted pieces of cannon with which it was armed. +“But,” says the <i>Mercurius Rusticus</i>, a +contemporary news-sheet, “instead of delivering them, +though at the time there were but <a name="page108"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 108</span>five men in the Castle, yet these +five, assisted by the maid-servants, at their ladies’ +Command, mount these peeces on their carriages againe, and lading +one of them they gave fire, which small Thunder so affrighted the +Sea-men that they all quitted the place and ran away.”</p> +<p>Operations thus opened, Lady Bankes proved herself a ready and +resourceful general. By beat of drum she summoned tenants +and friends, who, responding to the number of fifty, garrisoned +the fortress for about a week, when a scarcity of provisions, +together with threatening letters, and the entreaties of their +wives, to whom home and children were more than King or +Parliament, or the Bankes family either, made them shamble home +again. We should perhaps not be too ready to censure +them. Lady Bankes, however, did not despair. A born +strategist, she perceived how vitally necessary it was, above all +else, to lay in a stock of provisions; and to secure them, and +time for her preparations she offered in the meekest way to give +up those cannon which, after all, although they made the maximum +of noise effected a minimum of harm.</p> +<p>The enemy, pacified by this offer, removed the guns and left +the castle alone for a while; thinking its defences weak +enough. But it was soon thoroughly provisioned, supplied +with ammunition, and garrisoned under the command of one Captain +Lawrence, and when the Roundheads of Poole next turned their +attention to Corfe, behold! it was bristling like a porcupine +with pikes and musquetoons and all those ancient +seventeenth-century engines of war, with which men were quaintly +done to <a name="page109"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +109</span>death—when by some exceptional chance the +marksmen earned their name and hit anybody.</p> +<p>The middle of June had gone before the Parliamentary forces +from Poole made their appearance. They numbered between two +and three hundred horse and foot, and brought two cannon, with +which they played upon the castle from the neighbouring hills, +with little effect. Then came an interlude, ended by the +appearance, on June 23rd, of Sir Walter Erle with between five +and six hundred men, to reinforce the besiegers. They +brought with them a “Demy-Canon, a Culverin, and two +Sacres,” and with these fired a hail of small shot down +into the castle upon those heights on either hand. The +results were poor to insignificance, and it was then determined +to attempt a storming of the castle. This grand advance, +made on June 26th, was begun by intimidating shouts that no +quarter would be granted, but the garrison were so little +terrified by this fighting with the mouth that, tired of waiting +the enemy from the walls, they even sallied out and slaughtered +some of the foremost, who were approaching cautiously under cover +of strange engines named the “Sow” and the +“Boar.” The besiegers then mounted a cannon on +the top of the church-tower, “which,” we are told, +“they, without fears of prophanation used,” and +breaking the organ, used the pipes of it for shot-cases. +The ammunition included, among other strange missiles, lumps of +lead torn off the roof and rolled up.</p> +<p>All these things proving useless, a band of a hundred and +fifty sailors was sent by the Earl of Warwick, with large +supplies of petards and <a name="page110"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 110</span>grenadoes, and a number of scaling +ladders, and then all thought the enterprise in a fair way of +being ended. The sailors, nothing loth, were made drunk, +the ladders were placed against the walls, and a sum of twenty +pounds was offered to the first man up. With preparations +so generous as these a riotous scaling-party, carrying pikes and +hand-grenades, strove to mount the ladders, but were met by an +avalanche of hot cinders, stones, and things still more +objectionable, hoarded up by the garrison from those primitive +sanitary contrivances called by antiquaries +“garderobes,” against such a contingency as +this. One sailor has his clothes almost burnt off his back, +another’s courage is dowsed with a pail of slops, others +are knocked over, bruised and battered, into the dry moat, by a +hundredweight of stone heaved over the battlements, and long +ladders full of escaladers, swarming up, on one another’s +heels, are flung backward with tremendous crashes by prokers from +arrow-slits in the bastioned walls. Soldiers under the +machicolated entrance towers have had their steel morions crushed +down upon their heads by heavy weights dropped upon them, and are +left gasping for breath and slowly suffocating in that meat-tin +kind of imprisonment; and a more than ordinarily active besieger, +who has made himself exceptionally prominent, is suddenly +flattened out by a heavy lump of lead. “The knocks +are too hot,” as Shakespeare says, and the assailants are +forced to retire, to bury their dead, to tend one another’s +hurts, and those most fortunate to cleanse themselves. That +same night of August 4th, Sir Walter Erle, hearing a rumour of +the King’s forces approaching, hurriedly raised <a +name="page111"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 111</span>the siege +and retreated upon Poole, and not until February 1646 was Corfe +Castle again molested.</p> +<p>This time it was beset to more purpose. Lady Bankes, now +a widow, for her husband had died in 1644, parted from his +family, was at Corfe, vigilant, keen-eyed, loyal, and more or +less strictly blockaded between Roundhead garrisons. +Wareham was in their possession, Poole, as ever, a hotbed of +disaffection, and Swanage watched by land and sea. A +gallant deed performed at the opening of 1646 by one Cromwell, a +youthful officer strangely enough, considering his name, on the +Royalist side, was of no avail. He with his troops burst +through the enemy’s lines at Wareham and on the way +encountered the Parliamentary governor of that place, whom he +captured and brought to Corfe. This was undertaken to +afford Lady Bankes an opportunity of escaping, if she wished, but +she fortunately refused, for on the way back the little party +were captured.</p> +<p>The castle was then besieged by Colonel Bingham, and endured +for forty-eight days the rigours of a strict investment. In +the meanwhile, Lawrence, the governor, deserted and at the same +time released the imprisoned governor of Wareham. Every one +knew the King’s cause here and in the whole of the kingdom +to be in desperate straits, and the knowledge of fighting for a +losing side unnerved all. Seeing the inevitable course of +events, Lieutenant-Colonel Pitman, one of the defenders’ +officers, secretly opened negotiations with the enemy for the +surrender, and, succeeding in persuading the new governor, who +had taken the post deserted by Lawrence, that a reinforcement +from Somersetshire <a name="page112"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +112</span>was expected, under that guise at dead of night +admitted fifty Parliamentary troops into the keep. When +morning dawned the garrison found themselves betrayed; but, +commanding as they did the lives of some thirty prisoners, they +were able to exact favourable terms of surrender. And then, +when all the defenders marched out, kegs of gunpowder were laid +in keep and curtain-towers, down in dungeons and under roofs, and +the match applied. When the roar and smoke of the explosion +had died away, the stern walls that for five hundred years had +frowned down upon the streets of Corfe had gone up in ruin.</p> +<p>Not altogether destroyed, in the Biblical completeness of the +fulfilled prophecies of “not one stone upon another,” +concerning Nineveh, and the Cities of the Plain; for tall spires +of cliff-like masonry still represent the keep and gateway, and +curtain-towers remain in recognisable shapes, connected by riven +jaws of masonry, so hard and so formless that they are not easily +to be distinguished from the rock in which their foundations are +set. Here a tower may be seen, lifted up bodily by the +agency of gunpowder, and set down again at a distance, gently and +as fairly plumb as it was it its original position: there another +has been torn asunder, as one tears a sheet of paper, and a few +steps away is another, leaning at a much more acute angle than +the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Everywhere, light is let into +dungeons and battlements abased; floors abolished and great empty +stone fireplaces on what were second, third and fourth floors +turned to mouthpieces for the winds. And yet, although such +havoc has been wrought, and although it is almost <a +name="page113"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 113</span>impossible +to identify the greater part of its chambers, Corfe Castle is +still a fine and an impressive ruin. It is grand when seen +from afar, and not less grand when viewed near at hand, from the +ravine in which runs the road to Wareham.</p> +<h2><a name="page114"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +114</span>CHAPTER XII</h2> +<p style="text-align: center" class="gutsumm">WAREHAM</p> +<p><span class="smcap">That</span> is a straight and easy road +which in four miles leads from Corfe to Wareham, and a breezy and +bracing road too, across heaths quite as unspoilt as those of +“Egdon,” but of a more cheerful and hopeful +aspect. <i>The Return of the Native</i>, whose scene is +laid on the heaths to the north-west, could not, with the same +justness of description, have been staged upon these, and from +another circumstance, quite apart from this heart-lifting +breeziness, these heaths have little in common with their +brooding neighbours. They are enlivened with the signs of a +very ancient and long-continued industry, for where the Romans +discovered and dug in the great deposits of china-clay found here +the Dorsetshire labourer still digs, and runs his truckloads on +crazy tramways down to the quays upon Poole Harbour at +Goathorn. Fragments of Roman pottery, made from this clay, +are still occasionally found here, but since that time the clay +has not been turned to extensive use on the spot where it is +found, but is shipped for Staffordshire and abroad. Much of +Poole’s prosperity is due to the china-clay trade, carried +on by the vessels of that <a name="page115"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 115</span>port, which receive it from barges +crossing the harbour. It was early used for tobacco-pipes, +and probably those of Sir Walter Raleigh’s first +experiments were made from the clay found here. So far back +as 1760 the export of Purbeck china-clay had reached ten thousand +tons annually. It has now risen to about sixty +thousand.</p> +<p>This northern portion of the Isle of Purbeck is indeed of +altogether different character from the rugged stony southern +half, beyond Corfe. It is low-lying and heathy, and the +roads are a complete change from the blinding whiteness +characterising those of Purbeck <i>Petræa</i>, as it may be +named. Here, mended with ironstone, they are of a ruddy +colour.</p> +<p>Leaving the clay-cutters and their terraced diggings behind, +we come, past the paltry hamlet of Stoborough, within sight of +Wareham, entered across a long causeway over the Frome marshes +and over an ancient Gothic bridge spanning the Frome +itself. Ahead is seen the tower of St. Mary’s, one of +the only two churches remaining of the original eight. Five +of the others have been swept away, and the sixth is converted +into a school. Wareham, it will be guessed, is not a +mushroom place of yesterday, but has a past and has seen many +changes.</p> +<p>Wareham, “the oldest arnshuntest place in Do’set, +where ye turn up housen underneath yer ’tater-patch,” +as described to the present historian by a rustic, who might have +been the original of Haymoss, in <i>Two on a Tower</i>, is indeed +of a hoary antiquity, and bears many evidences of that attractive +fact. Its chief streets, named after the cardinal points of +the compass, do not perhaps afford the best <a +name="page116"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 116</span>evidences +of that age, for they are broad and straight and lined with +houses which, if not all Georgian, are so largely in that style +that they influence the general character of the thoroughfares +and give them an air of the eighteenth century. For this +there is an excellent reason, found in the almost complete +destruction by fire of Wareham, on July 25th, 1762.</p> +<p>To the ordinary traveller—and certainly to the +commercial traveller—without a bias for history and +antiquities, it is the dullest town in Wessex. Not decayed, +like Cerne Abbas, its streets are yet void and still, and how it, +under this constant solitude and somnolence, manages to retain +its prosperity and cheerfulness is an unsolved riddle.</p> +<p>Wareham, like Dorchester, was enclosed within earthworks; but +while Dorchester has overleaped those ancient bounds, Wareham has +shrunk within them, and one who, climbing those stupendous +fortifications, looks down upon the little town, sees gardens and +orchards, pigsties and cowsheds plentifully intermingled with the +streets, on the spot where other and vanished streets once +stood. That “once,” however, was so long ago +that the effect of decay, once produced, no longer obtains, and +the mind dwells, not so greatly upon the fallen fortunes evident +in such things, as upon the luxuriance of the gardens themselves +and the prettiness of the picture they produce, intermingled with +the houses.</p> +<p>Wareham—“Anglebury” Mr. Hardy calls +it—is, or was when the latest census returns were +published, a town of two thousand and three inhabitants.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image116" href="images/p116a.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Approach to Wareham" +title= +"Approach to Wareham" + src="images/p116a.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Since then it has certainly not increased, and most likely has +lost more than those odd three, thus coming within the fatal +definition given somewhere, by some one, of a village.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p116b.jpg"> +<img alt= +"The Walls of Wareham" +title= +"The Walls of Wareham" + src="images/p116b.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p><a name="page117"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +117</span>Things are in this way come to a parlous state, for +this is the latest of a good many modern strokes. One, +which hurt its pride not a little, was when, in the +redistribution of Parliamentary seats, it lost its representation +and became merged in a county division. Another—but +why enumerate these undeserved whips and scorns? In one +respect Wareham keeps an urban character. It has two +inns—the “Black Bear” and the “Red +Lion”—that call themselves hotels, and a score or so +of minor houses where, if you cannot obtain a desirable +“cup of genuine,” why, “’tis a sad thing +and an oncivilised?”</p> +<p>It was doubtless its ancient story which induced Mr. Hardy to +style Wareham “Anglebury,” for that story is greatly +concerned with the settlement of the Anglo-Saxons in Dorset and +the fortunes of the Kingdom of Wessex. Conveniently near +the sea, within the innermost recesses of Poole Harbour, and yet +removed from the rage and havoc of the outer elements, it lies on +the half-mile-broad tongue of land separating the two rivers +Piddle and Frome, at the distance of little over a mile from +where they debouch upon the landlocked harbour. In a nook +such as this you might think a town would have been secure, and +that was the hope of those who founded it here. But, to +render assurance doubly sure, those original +town-builders—who were probably much earlier than the +invading Saxons and are thought to have been some British +tribe—heaped up and dug out those famous “walls of +Wareham,” which surround the town to this day, and are not +walls in the common acceptation of <a name="page118"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 118</span>the term, but ditches so deeply +delved, and mounds so steeply piled that they are in some places +little more scalable than a forthright, plumb up and down, wall +of brick or masonry would be, and with an “angle of +repose” sufficiently acute to astonish any modern railway +engineer.</p> +<p>Wareham, lying within these cyclopean earthworks, was a place +of strength, but it was its very strength that brought about the +bloody tangle of its long history. Strong defences require +determined attacks. That history only opens with some +clearness at the time of the Saxon occupation, when the piratical +Danes were beginning to harry the coast, but it continues with +accounts of fierce assaults and merciless forays, repeated until +the time when Guthrum, the Danish chief, was opposed by only a +few dispirited defenders. In <span +class="GutSmall">A.D.</span> 876 these Northmen captured the +place, but were besieged by Alfred the Great, who starved them +out. Some Saxon confidence then returned, but the old +miseries were repeated when Canute, not yet the pious Canute of +his last years, sailed up the Frome and not only destroyed this +already oft-destroyed town, but pillaged the greater part of +Wessex.</p> +<p>Little wonder, then, that Wareham was described as a desolated +place when the Conqueror came; but it was made to hold up its +head once more, and the two mints it had owned in the time of +Saxon Athelstan were re-established. The castle, whose name +alone survives, in that of Castle Hill, was then built, and, in +the added strength it gave, was the source of many troubles soon +to come. It was surprised and seized for the Empress Maud +in 1138, but captured and burnt by Stephen four years <a +name="page119"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 119</span>later, in +the absence of its governor, the Earl of Gloucester, who +returning, recaptured the town after a three-weeks’ +siege. At length the treaty of peace and tolerance between +Stephen and Maud gave the townsfolk—those few of them who +had been courageous enough to remain, and fortunate enough to +survive—an opportunity of creeping out of the cellars, and +of looking around and reviewing their position. “Hope +springs eternal,” and these remnants of the Wareham folk +were in some measure justified of their faith, for it was not +until another half-century had passed that the town was again +besieged and taken. That event was an <a +name="page120"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 120</span>incident in +the contention between King John and his Barons, and a feature of +it was the destruction of the castle, never afterwards +rebuilt.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image119" href="images/p119.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Wareham" +title= +"Wareham" + src="images/p119.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>That destruction was one of the greatest blessings that could +possibly have befallen this ancient cockpit of racial and +personal warfares, for it rendered Wareham a place of little +account in the calculations of mediæval partisans; and then +it grew and prospered, unmolested, until the Civil War of Crown +and Parliament, when old times came again, in the bewildering +circumstances of its being garrisoned for the Parliament against +the inclination of the loyal townsfolk, besieged and half ruined +and then captured by the Royalists, obliged to batter the +property of their friends before they could recover it, and then +stormed and surrendered and regained and evacuated until the Muse +of History herself ceases to keep tally. Few people looked +on: most took an active part, and the rector himself, “a +stiff-necked and stubborn scorner of good things,” was +wounded in the head and imprisoned nineteen times. The +obvious criticism here is that they must have been short +sentences. The Parliamentary commander, Sir Anthony Ashley +Cooper, was for punishing the “dreadful malignancy shown +towards the cause of righteousness” by the Wareham people, +and advised that the place be “plucked down and made no +town”; but this course was not adopted.</p> +<p>Apart from battles and sieges, Wareham has witnessed many +horrid deeds. In that castle whose site alone remains, +Robert de Belesme was starved to death in 1114, and on those +walls an unfortunate and indiscreet hermit and prophet, one Peter +of <a name="page121"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +121</span>Pomfret, who had prophesied that the King should lose +his crown, was hanged and quartered in 1213, after having been +fed, in the manner of the prophet Micaiah, with the bread of +affliction, and the water of affliction, in the gruesome dungeons +of Corfe. For King John, the Ahab of our history, had a way +of his own with seers of visions and prophesiers of disaster; and +his way, it will be allowed, very effectually discouraged prying +into futurity.</p> +<p>Here also, at a corner of these grassy ramparts still called +“Bloody Bank,” three poor fellows who had taken part +in the Monmouth Rebellion were hanged, portions of their bodies +being afterwards exposed, with ghastly barbarity, in different +parts of the town.</p> +<p>Following the long broad street from where the town is entered +across the Frome, the “Black Bear” is passed, +prominent with its porch and the great chained effigy of the +black bear himself, sitting on his rump upon the roof of +it. Passing the Church of St. Martin, perched boldly on a +terrace above the road, its tower bearing a quaintly lettered +tablet, handing the churchwardens of 1712 down to posterity, we +now come to the northern extremity of Wareham, and descending to +the banks of the Piddle, may, looking backwards, see those old +defences, the so-styled “walls,” heaped up with +magnificent emphasis.</p> +<p>They envisage the ancient drama of the contested town, and +although it is a drama long since played, and the curtain rung +down upon the last act, two hundred and fifty years ago, this +scenery of it can still eloquently recall its dragonadoes and +blood-boltered episodes.</p> +<h2><a name="page122"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +122</span>CHAPTER XIII</h2> +<p class="gutsumm">WAREHAM TO WOOL AND BERE REGIS</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Leaving</span> Wareham by West Street, +where there is a “Pure Drop” inn, perhaps suggesting +the sign of the public where John Durbeyfield boozed, at far-away +Marlott, a valley road leads by East Stoke to the remains of +Bindon Abbey.</p> +<p>The ruins of Bindon Abbey are few and formless, standing in +tree-grown and unkempt grounds, where a black and green stagnant +moat surrounds a curious circular mound. Those who +demolished Bindon Abbey did their work thoroughly, for little is +left of it save the bases of columns and the foundations of +walls, in which archæological societies see darkly the +ground plan of the old Cistercian monastery. A few stone +slabs and coffins remain, among them a stone with the indent of a +vanished life-sized brass to an abbot. The inscription +survives, in bold Lombardic characters—</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: center"><span +class="GutSmall">ABBAS RICARDUS DE MANERS HIC TUMULATUR</span><br +/> +<span class="GutSmall">APPŒNAS TARDUS DEUS HUNC +SALVANS</span><br /> +<span class="GutSmall">TUEATUR.</span></p> +</blockquote> +<p>Close by is the stone sarcophagus in which Angel Clare, +sleep-walking from Woolbridge House (which is represented in the +story as being much nearer to this spot than it really is), laid +Tess. <a name="page123"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +123</span>Near the ruin, beside the Frome, is Bindon Abbey Mill, +where Angel Clare proposed to learn milling.</p> +<p> +<a name="image123" href="images/p123.jpg"> +<img class='floatright' alt= +"The Abbot’s Coffin, Bindon Abbey" +title= +"The Abbot’s Coffin, Bindon Abbey" + src="images/p123.jpg" /> +</a>Here that thing not greatly in accord with monastic remains +and hallowed vestiges of the olden times—a railway +station—comes within sight and hearing at the end of Wool +village. Old and new, quiet repose and the bustling conduct +of business, mingle strangely here, for within sight of Wool +railway station, and within hearing of the clashing of the heavy +consignments of milk-churns, driven up to it, to be placed on the +rail and sent to qualify the tea of London’s great +populations, stands the great, mellowed, Elizabethan, red brick +grange or mansion known as Woolbridge House, romantically placed +on the borders of the rushy river Frome. The property at +one time belonged to the neighbouring Abbey of Bindon, from which +it came to Sir Thomas Poynings, and then to John +Turberville. Garrisoned as a strategic point during the +Civil Wars, its history since that period is an obscure and +stagnant one. Long since passed from Turberville hands, it +now belongs to the Erle-Drax family of Charborough Park and +Holnest. The air of bodeful tragedy that naturally enwraps +the place and has <a name="page124"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +124</span>made many a passenger in the passing trains exclaim at +sight of it, “what a fitting home for a story!” has +at last been justified in its selection by the novelist as the +scene of Tess’s confession to her husband. It was +here the newly married pair were to have spent their +honeymoon. “They drove by the level road along the +valley, to a distance of a few miles, and, reaching Wellbridge, +turned away from the village to the left, and over the great +Elizabethan bridge, which gives the place half its name. +Immediately behind it stood the house wherein they had engaged +lodgings, whose external features are so well known to all +travellers through the Frome Valley; once portion of a fine +manorial residence, and the property and seat of a +D’Urberville, but since its partial demolition, a +farm-house.”</p> +<p>It is not altogether remarkable that Clare found the +“mouldy old habitation” somewhat depressing to his +dear one; and she was altogether startled and frightened at +“those horrid women,” whose portraits are actually, +as in the pages of the novel they are said to be, on the walls of +the staircase: “two life-size portraits on panels built +into the masonry. As all visitors are aware, these +paintings represent women of middle age, of a date some two +hundred years ago, whose lineaments once seen can never be +forgotten. The long pointed features, narrow eye, and smirk +of the one, so suggestive of merciless treachery; the bill-hook +nose, large teeth, and bold eye of the other, suggesting +arrogance to the point of ferocity, haunt the beholder afterwards +in his dreams.” They are indeed unprepossessing +dames. One is growing indistinguishable, but the other +still wickedly leers <a name="page126"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 126</span>at you, glancing from the tail of +her eye, as though challenging admiration. A painted round +or oval decorative frame surrounds these Turberville portraits, +for such they are, and so they were explained to be to Clare, who +uneasily recognised their likeness in an exaggerated form, to his +own darling. All the old D’Urberville vices of +lawless cunning, mediæval ferocity, and callous +heartlessness are reflected in those sinister portraits, which +seemed to him to hold up a distorting mirror to the woman he had +married, and certainly proved themselves of her kin.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image125" href="images/p125.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Woolbridge House" +title= +"Woolbridge House" + src="images/p125.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>A farm-house the place remains, the ground-floor rooms +stone-flagged and chilly to modern notions, the fireplaces vast +and cavernous as they are wont to be in such old houses. It +is perhaps more romantic seen in the middle distance than when +made the subject of closer study. But it is of course the +home of a ghost story, and a very fine and aristocratic +ghost-story too, made the subject of an allusion in <i>Tess of +the D’Urbervilles</i>. It seems that in that very +long ago, generally referred to in fairy stories as “once +upon a time,” there was a Turberville whose unholy passions +so broke all bounds of restraint that he murdered a guest while +the two of them were riding in the Turberville family +coach. But as the guest was himself one of the family, it +were a more judicial thing, perhaps, to divide the blame. +This incident in the annals of a race who very improperly often +figured as sheriffs and such-like guardians of law and order, +took place on the road between Wool and Bere, and we are asked to +believe that there are those who have heard the wheels of the +blood-stained family <a name="page127"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 127</span>coach traversing this route. +One or two are said to have seen it, but <i>they</i> are persons +proved to own some mixture of that blood, for to none other is +this pleasing spectacle of a black midnight coach and demon +horses vouchsafed. But stay! Not so pleasing after +all, this proof of ancestry, for to them it is a warning of +impending disaster and dissolution.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image127" href="images/p127.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Woolbridge House: Entrance Front" +title= +"Woolbridge House: Entrance Front" + src="images/p127.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>That is a terribly dusty road which, in six miles, leads from +Woolbridge to Bere Regis, across the heaths: in some +summers—<i>experto crede</i>—so astonishingly deep in +dust that it is not only impossible to ride a bicycle over it, +but scarce possible to walk. But this heath road is as +variable as the moods of a woman. It will be of this +complexion at one time, and at another entirely different. +It is perhaps only when this desirable difference rules that one +<a name="page128"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +128</span>appreciates the scenery it passes through; scenery +wholly of buff sand, purple heather, furze, and bracken, whose +colours are by distance blended into that rich purple brown +termed, in <i>The Return of the Native</i>, +“swart.” For this is the district of that +gloomy tale, perhaps at once the most powerful and painful in its +tragic intensity of all the Wessex novels, and one in which the +element of scenery adds most strikingly to the unfolding of +futilities and disasters. “Bere Heath” it is, +according to the chartographers of the Ordnance Survey, but to +ourselves who are on literary pilgrimage bent, it is Egdon Heath +whose “swart abrupt slopes” are here seen on every +side, now rising into natural hillocks masquerading solemnly as +sepulchral tumuli, now dipping into hollows where the rainwater +collects in marshy pools and keeps green the croziers and +fully-opened fronds of the bracken much longer than the parched +growths, at the crests of these rises; and again spreading out +into little scrubby plains.</p> +<p>Mr. Hardy, who has translated the reticent solemnity of Egdon +Heath into such poignant romance, has said how pleasant it is to +think or dream that some spot in these extensive wilds may be the +heath of Lear, that traditionary King of Wessex whose sorrows +Shakespeare has made the subject of tragedy; and he has himself, +in <i>The Return of the Native</i>, made these heaths the stage +whereon a tragedy is enacted that itself bids fair to become a +classic little less classical than the works of +Shakespeare. True it is that his tragedy is in the rustic +kind, and none of the characters in it far above the homespun +sort, but the stricken <a name="page129"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 129</span>worm feels as great a pang as when a +giant dies, and the woes of Mrs. Yeobright, of Clym, and of +Eustacia and Damon Wildeve are none the less thrilling than those +of that</p> +<blockquote><p>“. . . very foolish fond old man<br /> +Fourscore and upward, not an hour more or less,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>whose wanderings are the theme of Shakespeare’s +muse.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image128" href="images/p128.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Gallows Hill, Egdon Heath" +title= +"Gallows Hill, Egdon Heath" + src="images/p128.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p><i>The Return of the Native</i> is a story of days as well as +nights, of fair weather and foul, of sunshine and darkness, but +it is in essence the story of a darkened stage. The +description of Egdon in the opening chapter is the keynote of a +mournful fugue:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“The face of the heath by its mere +complexion added half an hour to evening: it could in like manner +retard the dawn, sadden noon, anticipate the frowning of storms +scarcely generated, and intensify the opacity of a moonless +midnight to a cause of shaking and dread.</p> +<p>“In fact, precisely at this transitional point of its +nightly roll into darkness the great and particular glory of the +Egdon waste began, and nobody could be said to understand the +heath who had not been there at such a time. It could best +be felt when it could not clearly be seen, its complete effect +and explanation lying in this and the succeeding hours before the +next dawn: then, and only then, did it tell its true tale. +The spot was, indeed, a near relation of night, and when night +showed itself an apparent tendency to gravitate together could be +perceived in its shades and the scene. The sombre stretch +of rounds and hollows seemed to rise and <a +name="page130"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 130</span>meet the +evening gloom in pure sympathy, the heath exhaling darkness as +rapidly as the heavens precipitated it.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>An artist who should come to Egdon, intent upon studying its +colour-scheme, would be nonplussed by the more than usual +fickleness and instability of its daylight hues. Shrouded +in the black repose of night, its tone is a thing of some +permanence, but under the effects of sunshine he finds it now +purple, now raw sienna, shading off into Prout’s Brown, and +again rising to glints and fleeting stripes of rich golden +yellow. It would be the despair of one who worked in the +slow analytic manner of a Birket Foster, but the joy of an +impressionist like a Whistler.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image130" href="images/p130.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Chamberlain’s Bridge" +title= +"Chamberlain’s Bridge" + src="images/p130.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>The extremely rich and beautiful colouring of Wool and Bere +Heaths deepens with the setting of the sun to a velvety blackness +and gives to the fir-crowned hills melodramatic and tragical +significances. Such an one is Gallows Hill, where the road +goes in a hollow formed by the massive shoulders of the +tree-studded <a name="page131"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +131</span>height. Here, the gossips say, with the +incertitude of rustic indifference, a man hanged himself, or was +hanged. When or why he committed what we have the authority +of conventional old-time journalism for calling “the rash +deed,” does not—in the same +language—“transpire.” But certainly he +selected a romantic spot for ending, for from the ragged crest, +underneath one of those “clumps and stretches of fir-trees, +whose notched tops are like battlemented towers crowning +black-fronted castles of enchantment,” the moorland, under +the different local names of Hyde Heath, Decoy Heath, and Gore +Heath, but all one to the eye, goes stretching away some ten +miles, to Poole Harbour, seen from this view-point, on moonlit +nights, glancing like a mirror in a field of black velvet.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image131" href="images/p131.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Rye Hill, Bere Regis" +title= +"Rye Hill, Bere Regis" + src="images/p131.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p><a name="page132"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 132</span>A +juicy interlude to the summer dryness of these wastes is that dip +in the road where one comes to the river Piddle at +Chamberlain’s Bridge, a battered old red brick pont that, +by the aid of the quietly gliding stream and the dark, boding +mass of fir-crowned Mat Hill in the background, makes a memorable +picture. Only when Bere Regis comes within sight are the +solitudes of Egdon left behind. Steeply down goes the way +into the village, down Rye Hill, past the remarkably picturesque +old thatched cottage illustrated here, perched on its steep +roadside bank, and so at last on to the level where Bere Church +is glimpsed, standing four-square and handsome in advance of the +long street, backed by dense clumps of that tree, the fir, which +has so strong an affection for these sandy heaths. Here +then is the introduction to the +“Kingsbere-sub-Greenhill” of the Wessex novels, the +“half-dead townlet . . . the spot of all spots in the world +which could be considered the D’Urbervilles’ home, +since they had resided there for full five hundred +years.”</p> +<h2><a name="page133"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +133</span>CHAPTER XIV</h2> +<p style="text-align: center" class="gutsumm">BERE REGIS</p> +<p><span class="smcap">This</span> “blinking little +place,” and now perhaps a not even blinking, but fast +asleep village, was at one time a market-town, and, more than +that, as its latinised name would imply, a royal residence. +Kingsbere, said to mean “Kingsbury”—that is to +say, “King’s place” or building—really +obtained its name in very different fashion. It was plain +“Bere,” long before the Saxon monarchs came to this +spot and caused the latter-day confusion among antiquaries of the +British “bere,” meaning an underwood, a scrub, copse, +bramble, or thorn-bed, with the Anglo-Saxon +“byrig.” We have but to look upon the +surroundings of Bere Regis even at this day, a thousand years +later, to see how truly descriptive that British name really +was. It was of old a place greatly favoured by royalty, +from that remote age when Elfrida murdered her stepson, Edward +the King and Martyr, at Corfe Castle, and thrashed her own son +Ethelred here with a large wax candle, for reproaching her with +the deed. Those events happened in <span +class="GutSmall">A.D.</span> 978, and it is therefore not in any +way surprising that no traces of the ferocious Queen +Elfrida’s residence have survived. Ethelred, we are +told, hated wax candles ever after <a name="page134"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 134</span>that severe thrashing, and doubtless +hated Bere as well; but it was more than ever a royal resort in +the later times of King John, who visited it on several occasions +in the course of his troubled reign. Thenceforward, +however, the favours of monarchs ceased, and it came to depend +upon the good will of the Abbots of Tarent Abbey and that of the +Turbervilles, who between them became owners of the manor.</p> +<p>The village street of Bere is bleak and barren. It is a +street of rustic cottages of battered red brick, or a compost of +mud, chopped straw, and lime, called “cob,” built on +a brick base, often plastered, almost all of them thatched: some +with new thatch, some with thatch middle-aged, others yet with +thatch ancient and decaying, forming a rich and fertile bed for +weeds and ox-eyed daisies and “bloody warriors,” as +the local Dorsetshire name is for the rich red +wall-flowers. Sometimes the old thatch has been stripped +before the new was placed: more often it has not, and the merest +casual observer can, as he passes, easily become a critic of the +thoroughness or otherwise with which the thatcher’s work +has been performed, not only by sight of the different shades +belonging to old and new, but by the varying thicknesses with +which the roofs are seen to be covered. Here an upstairs +window looks out immediately, open-eyed, upon the sunlight; there +another peers blinkingly forth, as behind beetling eyebrows, from +half a yard’s depth of straw and reed, shading off from a +coal-black substratum to a coffee-coloured layer, and thence to +the amber top-coating of the latest addition. Warm in +winter, cool in summer, is the testimony of cottagers towards <a +name="page135"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 135</span>thatch; and +earwiggy always, thinks the stranger under such roofs, as he +observes quaint lepidoptera ensconced comfortably in his +bed. Picturesque it certainly is, expensive too, although +it may not generally be thought so; but it is more enduring than +cheap slates or tiles, and, according to many who should know, if +indeed their prejudices do not warp their statements, cheaper in +the long run.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image135" href="images/p135.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Bere Regis" +title= +"Bere Regis" + src="images/p135.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>It is, in fine, not easy to come to a definitive pronouncement +on the merits or demerits, the comparative cheapness or +costliness, of rival roofing materials. The cost of the +materials themselves, payments for laying them, and the +astonishing difference between the enduring qualities of thatch +well and thatch indifferently laid forbid certitude. But +all modern local authorities are opposed to thatch, chiefly on +the score of its liability to fire. All the many and +extensive fires of Dorsetshire have been caused by <a +name="page136"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 136</span>ignited +thatch; or else, caused in other ways, have been spread and +magnified by it. Yet, here again your rustic will stoutly +defend the ancient roofing, and declare that while such a roof is +slowly smouldering, and before it bursts into a blaze, he can +dowse it with a pail of water. No doubt, but that water, +from a well perhaps two hundred feet deep, and that ladder from +some neighbour half-a-mile away, are sometimes not to be brought +to bear with the required celerity.</p> +<p>This, let it be fervently said, is not an attack upon thatch: +it is but the presentation of pros and cons, and is no argument +in favour of that last word in utilitarian hideousness, +corrugated galvanized iron, under whose shelter you freeze in +winter and fry in summer.</p> +<p>Meanwhile, here are ruined cottages in the long street of +Bere, whose condition has been brought about by just such causes, +and whose continuation in that state is due, not to a redundancy +of dwellings, but because the Lady of the Manor at Charborough, +despising the insignificant rents here, will not trouble about, +or go to the expense of, rebuilding.</p> +<p>Hence the gaps in the long row, like teeth missing from a +jaw.</p> +<p>Not a little hard-featured and stern at first sight, owing to +the entire absence of the softening feature of gardens upon the +road, this long street of Bere has yet a certain self-reliant +strong-charactered aspect that brings respect. It has, too, +the most interesting and beautiful church, rich in historical, +and richer in literary, associations.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image137" href="images/p137.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Bere Regis" +title= +"Bere Regis" + src="images/p137.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Bere Regis in its decay is a storehouse of old <a +name="page138"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 138</span>Dorset +speech and customs. To its cottagers vegetables are +“gearden-tackle,” sugar—at least, the moist +variety—is “zand,” and garden-flowers all have +quaint outlandish names. The rustic folk have a keen, if +homely philosophy. “Ef ’twarnt for the +belly,” said one to the present writer, in allusion to cost +of living, “back ’ud wear gold.” +“Bere,” said another—an +‘outlandish’ person he, who had only been settled in +the village a decade or so and accordingly was only regarded as a +stranger, and so indeed regarded himself—“Bere, a +poor dra’lattin twankyten pleace, ten mile from anywheer, +God help it!” which is so very nearly true that, if you +consult the map you will find that Dorchester is ten miles +distant, Corfe Castle twelve, Wimborne twelve, Blandford eight, +and Wareham, the nearest town, seven miles away.</p> +<p>“Kingsbere-sub-Greenhill,” as Mr. Hardy elects to +rechristen Bere Regis, owes the ultimate limb of that compound +name to Woodbury Hill, a lofty elevation rising like an +exaggerated down, but partly clothed with trees, on the outskirts +of Bere Regis. The novelist describes this scene of an +ancient annual fair, now much shrunken from its olden import, +rather as it was than as it is. “Greenhill was the +Nijni Novgorod of South Wessex; and the busiest, merriest, +noisiest day of the whole statute number was the day of the +sheep-fair. This yearly gathering was upon the summit of a +hill, which retained in good preservation the remains of an +ancient earthwork, consisting of a huge rampart and entrenchment +of an oval form, encircling the top of the hill, though somewhat +broken down here and there. To each of the two openings, on +opposite sides, <a name="page139"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +139</span>a winding road ascended, and the level green space of +twenty or thirty acres enclosed by the bank was the site of the +fair. A few permanent erections dotted the spot, but the +majority of the visitors patronised canvas alone for resting and +feeding under during the time of their sojourn here.”</p> +<p>The place looks interesting, viewed from beneath whence two +forlorn-looking houses are seen perched on the very ridge of the +windy height. But it is always best to remain below, and so +to keep romantic illusions; and here is no exception. +Climbing to the summit, those two houses are increased to fifteen +or seventeen red-brick, storm-beaten cottages, some thatched, +others slated, mostly uninhabited; all commonplace. The +fair is still held in September, beginning on the 18th, the +Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Formerly it lasted a +week, and, at the rate of a hundred pounds a day in tolls to the +Lord of the Manor, brought that fortunate person an annual +“unearned increment” as the Radicals would call it, +of £700. Nowadays those tolls are very much of a +negligible quantity.</p> +<p>Here it was, during the sheep fair, that Troy, supposed to +have long before been drowned in Lulworth Cove, but living and +masquerading as Mr. Francis, the Great Cosmopolitan Roughrider, +enacted the part of Dick Turpin in the canvas-covered show, and, +looking through a hole in the tent, unobserved himself, observed +Bathsheba, who had thought him dead.</p> +<p>The villagers of Bere look askance upon the dwellers on this +eyrie. They tell you “they be gipsy vo’k up +yon,” and hold it to be the last resort of those declining +in worldly estate. Villagers <a name="page140"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 140</span>going, metaphorically, “down +the hill” in the direction of outdoor relief, move to the +less desirable cottages in the village, and then, complete penury +at last overtaking them, continue their moral and economic +descent by the geographical ascent of this hill of Woodbury, +whence they are at last removed to “The Union.”</p> +<p>Below Woodbury Hill, on the edge of Bere Wood, the scene of an +old Turberville attempt at illegal enclosure, is rural Bloxworth, +whose little church contains the fine monument of Sir John +Trenchard “of the ancient family of the Trenchards in +Dorsetshire,” Sergeant-at-Law and Secretary of State in the +reign of William and Mary. He died in 1695, aged 46. +Ten years before, he had been an active sympathiser with the Duke +of Monmouth, in that ill-fated rebellion, and it is told, how, +when visiting one Mr. Speke at Ilchester, hearing that Jeffreys +had issued a warrant for his arrest, he instantly took horse, +rode to Poole and thence crossed to Holland, returning with the +Prince of Orange three years later.</p> +<p>Above all other interest at Bere is the beautiful church, +standing a little distance below the long-drawn village street, +and clearly from its character and details, a building cherished +and beautified by the Abbey of Tarent, by the Turbervilles, and +by Cardinal Archbishop Morton, native of the place.</p> +<p>The three-staged pinnacled tower is very fine, the lower stage +alternately of stone and flint, the three surmounting courses +diapered: the second and third stages treated wholly in that +chessboard fashion. The beautiful belfry windows, of three +lights, divided into three stages by transoms, are <a +name="page141"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 141</span>filled with +pierced stonework. The exterior south wall of the church is +of alternate red brick and flint, in courses of threes. +There is a remarkable window in the west wall of the north aisle, +and in the south wall the exceptionally fine and unusual +Turberville <a name="page142"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +142</span>window, of late Gothic character and five lights, +filled in modern times by the Erle-Drax family, of Charborough, +with a series of stained-glass armorial shields, displaying the +red lion of the Turbervilles, all toe-nails and whiskers, and +ducally crowned, ramping against an ermine field, firstly by +himself and then conjointly with the arms of the families with +which the Turbervilles, in the course of many centuries, allied +themselves. The Erle-Draxes have not, in honouring the +extinct Turberville, forgotten themselves, for some of the +shields display their arms and those of the Sawbridges, +Grosvenors, Churchills, and Eggintons they married.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image141" href="images/p141.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Bere Regis: Interior of Church" +title= +"Bere Regis: Interior of Church" + src="images/p141.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Entering, the building is seen to be even more beautiful than +without. Its most striking and unusual +feature—unusual in this part of the country—is the +extraordinarily gorgeous, elaborately carved and painted timber +roof, traditionally said to have been the gift of Cardinal +Morton, born at Milborne Stileman, in the parish of Bere +Regis. The hammer-beams are boldly carved into the shapes +of bishops, cardinals, and pilgrims, while the bosses are worked +into great faces that look down with a fat calm satisfaction that +must be infinitely reassuring to the congregations.</p> +<p>The bench ends are another interesting feature. Many are +old, others are new, done in the old style when the church was +admirably restored by Street. Had Sir Gilbert Scott been +let loose upon it, it may well be supposed that the surviving +bench-ends would have been cast out, and nice new articles by the +hands of his pet firm of ecclesiastical furnishers put in their +stead. One is dated, in <a name="page143"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 143</span>Roman numerals, MCCCCCXLVII; another +is inscribed “IOH. DAV. WAR. DENOF. THYS. CHARYS,” +and another bears a merchant’s mark, with the initial of +“I. T.” The Transitional Norman pillars are +bold and virile, with humorous carvings of that period strikingly +projecting from their capitals. It evidently seemed to that +now far-away waggish fellow who sculptured them that toothache +and headache were things worth caricaturing. Let us hope he +never suffered from them, but he evidently took as models some +who were such martyrs.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image143" href="images/p143.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Pew ends in Bere Regis Church" +title= +"Pew ends in Bere Regis Church" + src="images/p143.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>But the centre of interest to us in these pages is by the +Turberville window in the south aisle, beneath whose gorgeous +glass is the great ledger-stone, covering the last resting-place +of the extinct family. It is boldly lettered:</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: center"><i>Ostium sepulchri +antiquae</i><br /> +<i>Famillae Turberville</i><br /> +<i>24 Junij 1710</i></p> +<p style="text-align: center">(<i>The door of the +sepulchre</i><br /> +<i>of the ancient family</i><br /> +<i>of the Turbervilles</i>).</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In the wall beneath the window is a defaced Purbeck marble +altar-tomb, and four others neighbour it. These are the +tombs described in <i>Tess of the D’Urbervilles</i> as +“canopied, altar-shaped, and plain; their brasses torn from +their matrices, <a name="page144"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +144</span>the rivet-holes remaining, like marten-holes in a +sand-cliff,” and it was on one of those that Alec +D’Urberville lay prone, in pretence of being an effigy of +one of her ancestors, when Tess was exploring the twilight +church.</p> +<p>The great monumental <i>History of Dorsetshire</i> tells the +enquirer a good deal of the Turbervilles who, being themselves +all dead and gone to their place, have, with a slight alteration +in the spelling of their name served as a peg on which to hang +the structure of one of the finest exercises ever made in the art +of novel writing. It seems that the Turbervilles descended +from one Sir Pagan or Payne Turberville, or de Turbida Villa, who +is shown in the Roll of Battle Abbey—or was shown, before +that Roll was accidentally burnt—to have come over with the +Conqueror. After the Battle of Hastings he seems to have +been one of twelve knights who helped Robert Fitz Hamon, Lord of +Estremaville, in his unholy enterprises, and then to have +returned to England when his over-lord was created Earl of +Gloucester. He warred in that lord’s service, in the +Norman conquest of Glamorgan, and was rewarded with a tit-bit of +spoil there, in the shape of the lordship of Coyty.</p> +<p>In the reign of Henry III. a certain John de Turberville is +found paying an annual fee or fine in respect of some land in the +forest of Bere, which an ancestor of his had impudently +endeavoured to enclose out of the estate of the Earl of Hereford; +and in 1297 a member of the family is found in the neighbourhood +of Bere Regis. This Brianus de Thorberville, or Bryan +Turberville, was lord of the manor, called from its situation on +the river Piddle, <a name="page145"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +145</span>and from himself, “Piddle Turberville,” and +now represented by the little village called Bryan’s +Piddle.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image145" href="images/p145.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Bere Regis: the Turberville Window" +title= +"Bere Regis: the Turberville Window" + src="images/p145.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>At a later period the rising fortunes of this family are +attested by their coming into possession of half of the manor of +Bere Regis, the other half being, as it had long been, the +property of Tarent Abbey. <a name="page146"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 146</span>Still later, when at last that Abbey +was dissolved, the Turbervilles were in the enjoyment of good +fortune, for the other half of the manor then came to them. +This period seems to have marked the summit of their advancement, +for from that time they gradually but surely decayed, giving +point to the old superstition which dates the decadence of many +an old family from that day when it sacrilegiously was awarded +the spoils of the Church. This fall from position began in +the reign of Queen Elizabeth, but D’Albigny Turberville, +the oculist who was consulted by Pepys the diarist, and +eventually died in 1696, as the tomb to him with the fulsome +inscription in Salisbury Cathedral tells us, was a distinguished +scion of the ancient race, as also was “George Turberville, +gentleman,” and poet, born at Winterborne Whitchurch, and +publishing books of poems and travels in 1570. These, +doubtless, were not forms of distinction that would have +commended themselves to those old fighting and land-snatching +Turbervilles; but, other times, other manners.</p> +<p>The last Turberville of Bere Regis was that Thomas Turberville +over whom the ancient vault of his stock finally closed in +1710. His twin daughters and co-heiresses, Frances and +Elizabeth, born here in 1703, sold the property and left for +London. They died at Purser’s Cross, Fulham, near +London, early in 1780, and were buried together at Putney. +Shortly afterwards their old manor-house of Bere Regis, standing +near the church, was allowed to lapse into ruin, and thus their +kin became only a memory where they had ruled so long. Of +the old branch of the family settled in Glamorganshire, a Colonel +Turberville remains the representative, but <a +name="page147"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 147</span>the +position of the various rustics who in Dorset and Wilts bear the +name, corrupted variously into Tollafield and Troublefield, is +open to the suspicion that they are the descendants of +illegitimate offspring of that race. There remained, +indeed, until quite recent years a humble family of +“Torevilles” in Bere Regis, one of whom persisted in +calling himself “Sir John.” But as Mr. Hardy +says, in the course of <i>Tess of the D’Urbervilles</i>, +instances of the gradual descent of legitimate scions of the old +knightly families, down and again downwards until they have +become mere farm-labourers, are not infrequent in Wilts and +Dorset. Their high-sounding names have undergone outrageous +perversions, as in the stated instance of courtly Paridelle into +rustic Priddle; but, although they have inherited no worldly gear +they own the same blood.</p> +<h2><a name="page148"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +148</span>CHAPTER XV</h2> +<p style="text-align: center" class="gutsumm">THE HEART OF THE +HARDY COUNTRY</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Dorchester</span> is not only the capital +of Dorset: it is also the chief town of the Hardy Country. +The ancient capital of Wessex was Winchester: the chief seat of +this literary domain is here, beside the Frome. Four miles +distant from it the novelist was born, and at Max Gate, +Fordington, looking down upon Dorchester’s roofs, he +resides.</p> +<p>The old country life still closely encircles the county town, +and on market-days takes the place by storm; so that when, by +midday, most of the carriers from a ten or fifteen miles radius +have deposited their country folk, and the farmers have come in +on horseback, or driving, or perhaps by train, the slighter +forms, less ruddy faces, and more urban dress of the townsfolk +are lost amid the great army of occupation that from farms, +cottages, dairies, and sheep-pastures, has for the rest of the +day taken possession of the streets. The talk is all of the +goodness or badness of the hay crop, the prospects of the +harvest, how swedes are doing, and the condition of cows, sheep, +and pigs; or, if it be on toward autumn, when the hiring of +farm-labourers, shepherds, and rural servants in general for the +next twelve months is the engrossing topic, <a +name="page149"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 149</span>then the +scarcity of hands and their extravagant demands are the themes of +much animated talk.</p> +<p>Dorchester faithfully at such times reflects the image of +Dorset, and Dorset remains to this day, and long may it so +remain, a great sheep-breeding and grazing county, and equally +great as a land of rich dairies. From that suburb of +Fordington, which has for so very many centuries been a suburb +that to those who know it the name bears no suburban connotation, +you may look down, as from a cliff-top, and see the river Frome +winding away amid the rich grazing pastures, and with one ear +hear the cows calling, while with the other the cries of the +newspaper boys are heard in the streets of the town. The +scent of the hay and the drowsy hum of the bees break across the +top of the bluff, and, just as one may read, in the exquisite +description of these things in the pages of <i>The Mayor of +Casterbridge</i>, the dandelion <a name="page150"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 150</span>and other winged seeds float in at +open windows. One may sometimes from this point, when the +foliage of its dense screen of trees grows thin, see Stinsford, +the “Mellstock” of that idyllic tale, <i>Under the +Greenwood Tree</i>; but in general you can see nothing of that +sequestered spot until you have reached the by-lane out of the +main road from Dorchester, and, turning there to the right, come +to Stinsford Church, along a way made a midday twilight by those +trees which render the title of that story so descriptive.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image149" href="images/p149.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Stinsford Church. (Mellstock)" +title= +"Stinsford Church. (Mellstock)" + src="images/p149.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Blue wood-smoke, curling up from cottage chimneys against the +massed woodlands that surround Kingston House, grey church, +largely ivy-covered and plentifully endowed with grotesque +gurgoyles—these, with school-house and scattered cottages, +make the sum-total of Stinsford, or +“Mellstock.” The school-house is that of the +young school-mistress, Fancy Day, in the story; and suggests +romance; but the sentimental pilgrim may be excused for being of +opinion that it is all in the book, with perhaps nothing left +over for real life. At any rate, passing it, as the +scholars within are, like bees, in Mr. Hardy’s words, +“humming small,” one does not linger, but speculates +more or less idly which was the cottage where Tranter Dewy lived, +and which that of Geoffrey Day, the keeper of Yalbury Great +Wood. There are not, after all, many cottages to choose +from, and Mr. Hardy has so largely peopled his stories from +Mellstock that each one might well be a literary landmark. +The Fiddler of the Reels, Mop Ollamoor, a rustic Paganini, whose +diabolical cleverness with his violin is the subject of a short +story, lived in one of these <a name="page151"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 151</span>thatched homes of rural content, and +in another was born unhappy Jude the Obscure. In each one +of the rest you can imaginatively find the home of a member of +that famous Mellstock choir, whose performances and enthusiasm +sometimes rose so “glorious grand” that those who +wrought with stringed instruments almost sawed through the +strings of fiddle and double-bass, and those others whose weapons +were of brass blew upon them until they split the seams of their +coats and sent their waistcoat-buttons flying with the force of +their fervid harmony, in the cumulative strains of Handel and the +dithyrambics of Tate and Brady. “Oh! for such a man +in our parish,” was thought to be the admiratory attitude +of the parson at the <i>fortissimo</i> outburst of a minstrel +from a neighbouring village, who had taken a turn with the local +choir; but the parson’s pose was less one of admiration +than of startled surprise.</p> +<p>All the members of that harmonious, if at times too vigorous, +choir are gone to the land where, let us hope, they are quiring +in the white robes and golden crowns usually supposed to be the +common wear “up along”; and their instruments are +perished too:</p> +<blockquote><p>The knight is dust, his sword is rust,<br /> +His soul is with the saints, we trust.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Or, as Mr. Hardy, in <i>Friends Beyond</i>, says of his own +creations:</p> +<blockquote><p>William Dewy, Tranter Reuben,<br /> +Farmer Ledlow late at plough,<br /> +Robert’s kin, and John’s, and Ned’s,<br /> +And the Squire and Lady Susan<br /> +Lie in Mellstock churchyard now.</p> +</blockquote> +<p><a name="page152"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 152</span>The +clergy, who were responsible for the disappearance of the old +choirs, did not succeed at one stroke in sweeping them away, and +in many parishes it was not until the leader had died that they +broke up the old rustic harmony. “The ‘church +singers,’ who played anthems, with selections ‘from +Handel, but mostly composed by themselves,’ had a position +in their parish. They had an admiring congregation. +Their afternoon anthem was the theme of conversation at the +church porch before the service, and of enquiry and critical +disquisition after. ‘And did John,’ one would +ask, ‘keep to his time?’ ‘Samuel was +crowding very fitly until his string broked.’ This +was said after a performance difficult in all the categories in +which difficulty—close up even to impossibility—may +be found. And there was, I was about to say, a finale, but +it seemed endless; it was a concluding portion, and a long one, +of the anthem.</p> +<p>“Mary began an introductory recapitulation, in which she +was ably followed, of the words, the subject of the composition, +the masterpiece of one, or many, if the choir had lent a helping +hand. It happened that Mary had to manage three full +syllables, and all the cadences, and trills, and quavers +connected therewith, as a solo. Then followed, through all +the turns of the same intricate piece, Thomas, of tenor voice, +who evolved his music, but did not advance to any elucidation of +the subject of his concluding effort. He only dwelt upon +the same syllables, at which the good minister was seen to smile +and become restless, particularly when Jonathan took on with his +deep bass voice, accompanied by the tones he drew from his <a +name="page153"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +153</span>bass-viol. He, as best suited a bass singer, +slowly repeated the syllables that Mary and Thomas had produced +in so many ways, and with such a series of intonations, +‘<span +class="GutSmall">OUR—GREAT—SAL</span>.’ +May some who tittered at this canonisation of, as it were, a +female saint, be forgiven!’ Had they waited a few +minutes, the grand union of all the performers in loud chorus +would have enlightened them to the fact that the last syllable +was only the first of one of three ending in +‘<i>vation</i>,’ which would be loudly repeated by +the whole choir till they appeared fairly tired out.”</p> +<p>The very last surviving vestige of the old village choirs of +the West of England became extinct in 1893. Until then the +startled visitor from London, or indeed any other part of a +country by that time given over to harmoniums in chapels, cheap +and thin organs in small churches, and more full-toned ones in +larger, would have found the village choir of Martinstown still +bass-viol and fiddle-scraping, flute-blowing, and +clarionet-playing, as their forefathers had been wont to +do. “Martinstown” is the style by which Wessex +folk, not quite equal to the constant daily repetition of the +name of Winterborne St. Martin, know that village, a little to +the west of Dorchester. It is a considerable place and by +no means remote, and it was therefore not the general +inaccessibility of Martinstown to modern ideas that caused this +survival, when every other parish had put away such things. +Martinstown then provided itself with an organ, as understood +to-day; and so escaped a middle period to which many another +parish fell a victim, between the decay of the old church music +and <a name="page154"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 154</span>the +adoption of the new. When, about the accession of Queen +Victoria, village minstrelsy began to relax, there came in a +fashion, or rather a scourge, of mechanical barrel-organs, fitted +to play a dozen or fewer, sacred tunes, according to the local +purse, or the local requirements. Precisely like secular +barrel organs, save only in the matter of the tunes they were +constructed to play, church minstrelsy with them not only became +mechanical but singularly unvaried, for, when your dozen tunes +were played, there was nothing for it—if, like Oliver +Twist, the congregation called for more—but to grind the +same things over again. The only variety—and that was +one not covenanted for—was when portions of the +melody-producing works decayed and broke off. A tooth +missing from a cog-wheel, or something wrong with the barrel, was +apt to give an ungodly twist to the Old Hundredth, calculated to +impart a novelty to that ancient stand-by of village churches, +and would even have made the air of “Onward, Christian +Soldiers!” stream forth in spasms, as though those soldiers +were an awkward squad learning some ecclesiastical +goose-step. In short, the barrel-organs were not +“things seemly and of good report,” and they +presently died the death.</p> +<p>Many regretted the old order of things, largely destroyed by +the current movements in the Church. Reforming High +Churchmen had seized upon the signs of weakness exhibited in the +old choirs, and had made away with them wherever possible. +The rustic music had, as we have seen, its humorous incidents, +but it was enthusiastic and was understood and sympathised with +by the people. <a name="page155"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 155</span>Surpliced choirs, and others, formed +as they now commonly are, from classes superior to those of which +the old instrumental and vocal choirs were composed, have not +that hold upon congregations, who do not sing, as the Prayer-book +and the Psalm enjoin, but listen while others do the singing for +them.</p> +<p>“Why, daze my old eyes,” said a Wessex rustic, +reviewing the trend of modern life, “everything’s +upsey-down. ’Tis, if ye want this and if ye want +that, put yer hand in yer pocket and goo an’ git +some’un to do’t for ye, or goo to the Stowers (he +meant the Stores) up to Do’chester, and buy yer +’taters and have’m sint home for ’ee, +cheaper’n ye can grow’m, let be the +back-breakin’ work of a hoein’ of ’em, and a +diggin’ of ’em and a clanin’ of +’em. An’ talking of church, why bless +’ee, tidden no manner of good yer liftin’ up yer +v’ice glad-like, an’ makkin’ a cheerful noise +onto the Lord, as we’m bidden to do. Not a bit. +Ef ye do’t passon looks all of a pelt, and they boys in +their nightshirts sets off a-sniggerin’ and they tells yer +ye bissen much of a songster, they ses.”</p> +<p>It has already been said that the instruments, as well as the +old village players of them, have perished, but at least one +specimen of that oddly named instrument, the +“serpent,” frequently mentioned by Mr. Hardy, has +survived. This example is in the possession of Messrs. H. +Potter & Co., of West Street, Charing Cross Road. The +serpent belongs to such a past order of things that, like the +rebecs, dulcimers, and shawms of Scriptural references, it +requires explanation.</p> +<p>The “serpent,” then, it may be learned, although +<a name="page156"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 156</span>invented +by one Guillaume so far back as the close of the sixteenth +century, first came into general use in the early part of the +eighteenth. It was a wind instrument, the precursor of the +bass horn, or ophicleide, which in its turn has been superseded +by the valved bass brasses of the present day. The serpent +of course owed its name to its contorted shape. It was +generally made of wood, covered with leather, and stained black, +and ranged in length from about twenty-nine to thirty-three +inches. The earlier form of serpent had but six holes, but +these were gradually increased, and keyed, until this now +obsolete instrument, as improved by Key, of London, about the +beginning of the nineteenth century, finally became possessed of +seventeen keys. It went out of use, contemporaneously with +the decay of the old village choirs, about 1830.</p> +<p>The geographical area of the heart of the Hardy Country is not +very great, but the difficulties of finding one’s way about +it are not small. The Vale of Great Dairies opens out, and +the many runnels of the Frome make the byways so winding that to +clearly know whither one is going demands the use of a very +large-scale Ordnance Map. But to lose one’s self here +is no disaster. You will find your way out again, and in +the meanwhile will have come into intimate touch with dairying, +and perhaps, if it be early summer, will find the barns and the +waterside busy with sheepshearers. Seeing the dexterous +shearing, the quick, practised movements of the men and the +panting helplessness of the sheep, one is reminded of the similar +scene in <i>Far from the Madding Crowd</i>.</p> +<p>Away across the Frome is the rustic, <a +name="page157"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +157</span>out-of-the-way village of West Stafford, which has a +little one-aisled church, still displaying the royal arms of the +time of Queen Elizabeth with that semée of lilies, the +empty boast of a sovereignty over France, which, to the +contemplative and sentimental student of history is as pitiful a +make-believe as that of penury apeing affluence. +“That glorious <i>Semper Eadem</i>,” motto, +“our banner and our pride,” as Macaulay says, looks a +little flatulent in these circumstances of a relaxed grasp.</p> +<p>The long rhymed inscription outside an off-licence beerhouse +in the village, displaying the Hardyean phrase of “a cup of +genuine” for a glass of ale, is a curiosity in its +way—</p> +<blockquote><p>I trust no Wise Man will condemn<br /> +A Cup of Genuine now and then.<br /> +When you are faint, your spirits low,<br /> +Your string relaxed ’twill bend your Bow,<br /> +Brace your Drumhead and make you tight,<br /> +Wind up your Watch and set you right:<br /> +But then again the too much use<br /> +Of all strong liquors is the abuse.<br /> +’Tis liquid makes the solid loose,<br /> +The Texture and whole frame Destroys,<br /> +But health lies in the Equipoise.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Resuming the north bank of the Frome, and the road to +Tincleton, a left-hand turning is seen leading across to +Piddletown, by way of Lower and Upper Bockhampton—hamlets +rustic to the last degree, and, by reason of being quite remote +from any road the casual stranger is likely to take, unknown to +the outside world. Yet the second of these, the thatched +and tree-embowered hamlet of Upper Bockhampton, has the keenest +interest for the <a name="page158"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +158</span>explorer of the Hardy Country, for it was here, in the +rustic, thatched cottage still occupied by members of the Hardy +family, that Thomas Hardy, novelist and poet, was born, June 2nd, +1840. It is a fitting spot for the birthplace of one who +has described nature as surely it has never before been +described, has pictured the moods of earth and sky, and has heard +and given new significances to the voices of birds and trees, by +the stubborn and intractable method of prose-writing.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image158" href="images/p158.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Birthplace of Thomas Hardy" +title= +"Birthplace of Thomas Hardy" + src="images/p158.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>The cottage stands—its front almost hid from sight in +the dense growths of its old garden and by the slope of the +downs—at the extreme upper end of Upper Bockhampton, on the +edge of the wild, <a name="page159"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +159</span>called, with a fine freedom of choice, Bockhampton or +Piddletown Heath, and Thorneycombe or Ilsington Woods. You +enter its garden up steep, rustic steps, and find its low-ceiled +rooms stone-flagged and criss-crossed with beams. At the +back, its walls, with <a name="page160"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 160</span>small latticed windows, look sheer +upon a lane leading into the heart of the woodland; where, so +little are strangers expected or desired that the tree-trunks +bear notice-boards detailing what shall be done to those who +trespass. Branches of these enshrining trees touch the +thatched roof and scrape the walls, and the voices of the wind +and of the woodlands reverberate from them; and when the sun goes +down, the nocturnal orchestra of owls and nightingales strikes +up. It is an ideal spot for the birth of one whose genius +and bent are largely in the interpretation of nature; but it must +not be forgotten that the chances are always against the +observation and appreciation of scenes amidst which a child has +been born and reared, and that only exceptional receptivity can +throw off the usual effect of staleness and lack of interest in +things usual and accustomed. It is thus in the nature of +things that the townsman generally takes a keener interest in the +country than those native to it, and the dweller in the mushroom +cities of commerce finds more in a cathedral city than many of +those living within the shadow of the Minster ever suspect. +This is to say, parabolically, what we all know, that the nature +of the seer is an exceptional nature, and rises superior to the +dulling effects of use and wont: unaccountable as the winds that +blow, and not to be analysed or predicated by any literary +meteorological department.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image159" href="images/p159.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Birthplace of Thomas Hardy" +title= +"Birthplace of Thomas Hardy" + src="images/p159.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Returning through Lower Bockhampton, on the way to Tincleton, +a ridge is presently seen on the left hand, crowned with +fir-trees, and a little questing will reveal a rush-grown pool, +the original of Heedless William’s Pond, mentioned in +<i>The Fiddler of the Reels</i>. <a +name="page161"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 161</span>Beyond this +landmark, a cottage that fills the position of +“Bloom’s End” in <i>The Return of the +Native</i>, is seen, and on the right-hand side the farmstead of +Norris Mill Farm, where, overlooking the Vale of Great Dairies, +is the original of Talbothays, the dairy where Angel Clare, +learning the business from Dairyman Crick, met Tess. Below +the grassy bluff on whose sides the farm-buildings stand may be +traced the fertilising course of the Frome, or as Mr. Hardy calls +it, the Var:—“The Var waters were clear as the pure +River of Life shown to the Evangelist, rapid as the shadow of a +cloud, with pebbly shadows that prattled to the sky all day +long. There the water-flower was the lily.”</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image161" href="images/p161.jpg"> +<img alt= +"The “Duck” Inn, Original of the “Quiet +Woman” Inn" +title= +"The “Duck” Inn, Original of the “Quiet +Woman” Inn" + src="images/p161.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>This land of fat kine and water-meads, to the south of the +road, is neighboured to the northward by the outlying brown and +purple stretches of Egdon Heath, into whose wilds we shall +presently come. “Bloom’s End,” or a house +that may well <a name="page162"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +162</span>stand for it, we have noticed, and now come upon a +humble little farm on the right hand, standing with front to the +road and facing upon a strikingly gloomy heather-covered +hill. This is the house, once the “Duck” inn, +which figures in <i>The Return of the Native</i> as the +“Quiet Woman” inn, kept by Damon Wildeve, who, a +failure as an engineer, made a worse shipwreck of life +here. As described in the novel, a little patch of land has +by dint of supreme exertions been reclaimed from the grudging +soil:</p> +<p>“Wildeve’s Patch, as it was called, a plot of land +redeemed from the heath, and after long and laborious years +brought into cultivation. The man who had discovered that +it could be tilled died of the labour: the man who succeeded him +in possession ruined himself in fertilising it. Wildeve +came like Amerigo Vespucci, and received the honours due to those +who had gone before.”</p> +<p>A casual talk with the small farmer who has taken the place +reveals the fact that this soil is a hard taskmaster and yields a +poor recompense. The heathery hill facing it is described +exactly as it is in nature:</p> +<p>“The front of the house was towards the heath and +Rainbarrow, whose dark shape seemed to threaten it from the sky. +. . .”</p> +<p>“It was a barrow. This bossy projection of earth +above its natural level occupied the loftiest ground of the +loneliest height that the heath contained. Although from +the vale it appeared but as a wart on an Atlantean brow, its +actual bulk was great. It formed the pole and axis of this +heathery world.”</p> +<p><a name="page163"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 163</span>The +soil at the back of the house is better, which indeed it could +well be without being even then particularly good. It +slopes towards the river, at what is described in the book as +“Shadwater Weir,” where the drowned bodies of Wildeve +and Eustacia were found:</p> +<blockquote><p>“The garden was at the back, and behind this +ran a still deep stream.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image163" href="images/p163.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Tincleton" +title= +"Tincleton" + src="images/p163.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>The village of Tincleton, the “Stickleford” of +casual mention in some of the short stories, is one of about a +dozen cottages, clustering round a little church and school; and +with presumably a few dozen more dwellings in the neighbourhood +of the wide common on which Tincleton stands, to account for the +existence of that school and that church. Past it and +Pallington, whose hill and hilltop firs, known as Pallington +Clump, are conspicuous for great distances, we turn to the left +and explore a portion of Egdon Heath towards Bryan’s Piddle +and Bere Regis. Everywhere the wilds now stretch forth and +seem to bid defiance to the best efforts of the cultivator, but +down at the hamlet of Hurst, where water is plentiful, there is +an ancient red-brick farm <a name="page164"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 164</span>of superior aspect, and yet with a +thatched roof—an effect oddly like that which might be +produced by a gentleman wearing a harvester’s hat. It +is obviously an old manor-house, and besides showing evidences of +former state, has two substantial brick entrance piers surmounted +by what country folk, in their native satire, call +“gentility balls.”</p> +<p>Such gentility in the neighbourhood of wild, uncanny Egdon +wears, as Mr. Hardy would say, “an anomalous +look.” The heath is more akin with Adam than with his +descendants:</p> +<blockquote><p>“This obscure, obsolete, superseded country +figures in Domesday. Its condition is recorded therein as +that of heathy, furzy, briary +wilderness—‘Bruaria.’ Then follows the +length and breadth in leagues; and, though some uncertainty +exists as to the exact extent of this ancient lineal measure, it +appears from the figures that the area of Egdon down to the +present day has but little diminished. ‘Turbaria +Bruaria’—the right of cutting heath-turf—occurs +in charters relating to the district. ‘Overgrown with +heth and mosse,’ says Leland of the same dark sweep of +country.”</p> +<p>“Here at least were intelligible facts regarding the +landscape—far-reaching proofs productive of genuine +satisfaction. The untamable Ishmaelitish thing that Egdon +now was it always had been. Civilisation was its enemy; and +ever since the beginning of vegetation its soil had worn the same +antique brown dress, the natural and invariable garment of the +particular formation. In its venerable one coat lay a +certain vein of satire on human vanity in clothes. A person +on a heath in raiment of modern cut and colours has more or less +an anomalous <a name="page165"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +165</span>look. We seem to want the oldest and simplest +human clothing where the clothing of the earth is so +primitive.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Here, if anywhere in this poor old England of ours, generally +over-populated and sorted over, raked about, and turned inside +out, there is quiet and solitude. No recent manifestations +of the way the world wags, no advertisement hoardings, no +gasometers or mean suburbs intrude upon the inviolable +heath. No one has yet suspected coal beneath the shaggy +frieze coat of this remote vestige of an earlier age, and its +vitals have therefore not been probed and dragged forth. A +railway skirts it, ’tis true, but only on the way +otherwhere, and no network of sidings has yet made a gridiron of +its unexploited waste. Elsewhere trim hedges or fences of +barbed-wire restrain the explorer, but here he is free to roam, +and may so roam until he has fairly lost himself.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image165" href="images/p165.jpg"> +<img alt= +"An Egdon Farmstead" +title= +"An Egdon Farmstead" + src="images/p165.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>It is a land wholly antithetic from the bubbling superficial +feelings of cities, and has the <a name="page166"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 166</span>introspective, self-communing air of +the solitary. A town-bred man,</p> +<blockquote><p>“Heart-halt and spirit-lame,<br /> + City-opprest,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and wearied with the weariful reek of the streets, the +jostling of the pavements, and the intolerable numbers of his +kind, might come to a spell of recluse life in a farm on Egdon, +and there rid him of that supersaturation of humanity; returning +at last to his streets with a new spirit, a brisker step, and a +revived hope in the right ordering of the world. So much +Egdon can do for such an one.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image166" href="images/p166.jpg"> +<img alt= +"A Farm on Egdon" +title= +"A Farm on Egdon" + src="images/p166.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>I know just such a farm, in the dip of the yellow road, its +thatched roofs and the near trees taking on a homely, comfortable +look when night <a name="page167"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +167</span>closes down upon the wild, when its windows are lit +with a welcome ray as the sun goes down, in an angry glory in the +west. This is, to me, the heart of the Hardy Country, and +its surroundings seem most closely to fit his imaginings. +The place has just that personality he gives his farmsteads, and +the wastes near it wear sometimes just that cold indifference to +humanity, and at others precisely that ogreish hostility, he in +his pagan way describes.</p> +<p>Halting here, as the sun goes down, and the landscape changes +from its daylight browns and purples to an irradiated orange, and +through the siennas and umbers of an etching, to the blackness of +night, I feel that here resides the <i>genius loci</i>, the +Spirit of the Heath.</p> +<h2><a name="page168"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +168</span>CHAPTER XVI</h2> +<p style="text-align: center" class="gutsumm">DORCHESTER TO +CROSS-IN-HAND, MELBURY, AND YEOVIL</p> +<p>A <span class="smcap">good</span> many outlying literary +landmarks of the Wessex novels may be cleared up by leaving +Dorchester by Charminster, and then, at a fork in the road just +past Wolveton, taking the left-hand turning and following for +awhile the valley road along the course of the river Frome. +Not for long, however, if it is desired to keep strictly to those +landmarks, do we pursue this easy course, for in another couple +of miles, by Grimstone station, we shall have to bear to the +right hand and make for what is known in Mr. Hardy’s pages +as “Long Ash Lane,” along whose almost interminable +course Farmer Darton and his friend rode, to the wooing of Sally +Hall, at Great Hintock, in that short story, <i>Interlopers at +the Knap</i>.</p> +<p>Long Ash Lane—in some editions of the novels styled +“Holloway Lane”—is the middle one of three +roads past Grimstone station. Those on either side lead +severally to Maiden Newton—the “Chalk Newton” +of <i>Tess of the D’Urbervilles</i>—and to Sydling +St. Nicholas; but this is, as described in that story, “a +monotonous track, without a village or hamlet for many miles, and +with very seldom a <a name="page169"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +169</span>turning.” For its own sake, it will +therefore be easily seen, Long Ash Lane is not an altogether +desirable route. It is an ancient Roman road, running +eventually to Yeovil and Ilchester; passing near by, but not +touching, and always out of sight of several small villages on +its lengthy way. Darton and Johns found it weariful as they +rode, the hedgerow twigs on either side “currycombing their +whiskers,” as Mr. Hardy delightfully says; and wayfarers on +foot, tired out, believe at last that it will never end:</p> +<p>“Unapprised wayfarers, who are too old, or too young, or +in other respects too weak for the distance to be traversed, but +who, nevertheless, have to walk it, say, as they look wistfully +ahead: ‘Once at the top of that hill, and I must surely see +the end of Long Ash Lane!’ But they reach the +hill-top, and Long Ash Lane stretches in front mercilessly as +before.”</p> +<p>After many miles this tiresome road at last comes in touch +with modern life, for Evershot station and the hamlet of Holywell +are placed directly beside it. Here we may turn right, or +turn left, or go onward, sure in all directions of finding many +scenes to be identified with the novels. Turning to the +right, a road not altogether dissimilar in its loneliness from +Long Ash Lane is found, but differing from it in the one +essential respect of ascending the ridge of lofty downs +overlooking the Vale of Blackmoor, and thus, while to the right +hand disclosing a dull expanse of table-land, on the left opening +out a romantic view, bounded only by distance and the +inadequacies of human eyesight. This is the road along +which Tess was <a name="page170"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +170</span>travelling—in the reverse direction—from +Dole’s Ash Farm at Plush, the “Flintcombe Ash” +of those tragical pages, to Beaminster or +“Emminster,” to visit the parents of Angel Clare, her +husband, when she came to that ill-fated meeting with Alec +D’Urberville at the spot we now approach, +Cross-in-Hand:</p> +<p>“At length the road touched the spot called +‘Cross-in-Hand.’ Of all spots on the bleached +and desolate upland this was the most forlorn. It was so +far removed from the charm which is sought in landscape by +artists and view-lovers as to reach a new kind of beauty, a +negative beauty of tragic tone. The place took its name +from a stone pillar which stood there, a strange rude monolith, +from a stratum unknown in any local quarry, on which was roughly +carved a human hand.”</p> +<p>The history and meaning of this lonely pillar on the solitary +ridgeway road are unknown. Thought by some to mark the +old-time bounds of property under the sway of the Abbot of Cerne, +others have considered it to be the relic of a wayside cross, +while others yet have held it to be a place of meeting of the +tenants and feudatories of the old abbey, and the hollow in the +stone to have been the receptacle for their tribute. But, +“whatever the origin of the relic, there was and is +something sinister, or solemn, according to mood, in the scene +amid which it stands; something tending to impress the most +phlegmatic passer-by.”</p> +<p>Here it was that Tess, on her way to Flintcombe Ash, was +surprised by the converted Alec D’Urberville, already +shaken in his new-found grace and preaching mission at sight of +her, and here he made <a name="page171"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 171</span>her swear upon it never to tempt him +by her charms or ways. “This was once a Holy +Cross,” said he. “Relics are not in my creed, +but I fear you at moments.” It was not very +reassuring to Tess when, leaving the spot of this singular +rencounter and asking a rustic if the stone were not a Holy +Cross, he replied, “Cross—no; ’twer not a +cross! ’Tis a thing of ill-omen, miss. It was +put up in wuld times by the relations of a malefactor, who was +tortured there by nailing his hand to a post and afterwards +hung. The bones lie underneath. They say he sold his +soul to the devil, and that he walks at times.”</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image170" href="images/p170.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Cross-in-Hand" +title= +"Cross-in-Hand" + src="images/p170.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>This pillar, “the scene of a miracle or murder, or +both,” stands some five feet in height, and rises from the +unfenced grassy selvedge of the road, where the blackberry bushes +and bracken grow, on the verge of the down that breaks +precipitously away to the vale where Yetminster lies. The +rude <a name="page172"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +172</span>bowl-shaped capital of the mystic stone has the coarse +semblance of a hand, displayed in the manner of the Bloody Hand +of Ulster.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image171" href="images/p171.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Batcombe" +title= +"Batcombe" + src="images/p171.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Deep down below, in midst of the narrowest lanes, lies the +sequestered village of Batcombe, from which this down immediately +above takes its name. The church stands almost in the +shadow of the hills. This also is a place of marvellous +legends, for a battered old Gothic tomb in the churchyard, +innocent of inscription, standing near the north wall of the +church, is, according to old tales the resting-place of one +“Conjuring Minterne,” a devil-compeller and +astrologer of sorts, who was originally buried half in and half +out of the church, for fear his master, “the horny +man,” as a character in one of Mr. Hardy’s romances +calls Old Nick, should have him, if buried otherwise. One +would like to learn more about “Conjuring Minterne” +and his strange tricks, but history is silent.</p> +<p>Returning to Evershot, or, as it is styled in the sources of +our pilgrimage, “Evershead,” we come to Melbury Park, +the seat of the Earl of Ilchester, and the principal scene of +that charming story, <i>The First Countess of Wessex</i>, in the +collection of “A Group of Noble Dames.” The +great house of oddly diversified architecture, stands in the +midst of this nobly wooded and strikingly varied domain, but can +readily be seen, for the carriage-drive is a public right of +way. This is the broad roadway through the park described +in the passage where Tupcombe, riding towards “King’s +Hintock Court”—as Mr. Hardy disguises the identity of +the place—from Mells, on Squire Dornell’s errand, saw +it stretching ahead “like an unrolled deal +shaving.”</p> +<p><a name="page173"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 173</span>Like +most of the stories of those noble dames, this romance of Betty +Dornell, the First Countess of Wessex, is founded upon actual +people, and largely upon their real doings. Squire Dornell +of Falls Park—really Mells Park—was in real life that +Thomas Horner who in 1713 married Susannah Strangways, heiress of +the Strangways family and owner of Melbury Sampford; and their +only child was Elizabeth, born in 1723, who in 1736, in her +thirteenth year, almost precisely as in the story, was married to +Stephen Fox, afterwards Earl of Ilchester, who died in +1776. The Countess died in 1792.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image173" href="images/p173.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Tomb of “Conjuring Minterne”" +title= +"Tomb of “Conjuring Minterne”" + src="images/p173.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p><a name="page174"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 174</span>But +this passage of family history is best set forth in the manner +customary to genealogists:</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p174a.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Family tree of Thomas Horner of Mells" +title= +"Family tree of Thomas Horner of Mells" + src="images/p174a.jpg" /> +</a> <a name="citation174"></a><a href="#footnote174" +class="citation">[174]</a></p> +<p>The father of the first Countess of Wessex was, it is curious +to know, descended from Little Jack Horner, that paragon of +selfishness who sat in a corner, eating his Christmas pie, and +who, the familiar nursery rhyme goes on to tell us,</p> +<blockquote><p>“Put in his thumb and pulled out a plum,<br +/> +And said, What a good boy am I!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The nursery rhyme was that, and something more. It was, +in fact a satire upon that John Horner who, upon the dissolution +of the monasteries, purchased for much less than it was worth the +confiscated Mells estate of Glastonbury Abbey. This prize, +the “plum” of the rhyme, is said to have been worth +£10,000. The Horners, represented by Sir John Horner, +espoused the side of the Parliament in the war with Charles I. +but they have kept their plum, at every hazard and in all +chances, and Mells Park is still in the family.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image174" href="images/p174.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Melbury House" +title= +"Melbury House" + src="images/p174.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Leland tells how the house of Melbury Park was built in the +sixteenth century by Sir Giles Strangways, but portions of the +great T-shaped building have at later times been added, notably +the wing built in the time of Queen Anne. The whole +heterogeneous pile, dominated by a church-like, six-sided central +<a name="page175"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 175</span>tower, +occupies a raised grassy site looking upon a lake on whose +opposite shore is the little manorial church of Melbury Sampford, +plentifully stored with monuments of Strangways and +Fox-Strangways, and in especial notable for that to the courtly +and equable husband of Betty Dornell. His epitaph, by the +hand of his widow, describes him as the most desirable of +husbands.</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: center">Near this stone is +interred<br /> +Stephen, Earl of Ilchester,<br /> +who died at Melbury<br /> +Sept. 26, <span class="GutSmall">A.D. MDCCLXXVI.</span>, aged +<span class="GutSmall">LXXII</span>.<br /> +He was the eighth son of Sir Stephen Fox, knight.<br /> +He married Elizabeth, only daughter of Thomas Horner,<br /> +of Mells, in the county of Somerset, esquire,<br /> +heiress-general to the family of<br /> +Strangways of Melbury, in the county of Dorset,<br /> +by whom he had Henry Thomas, his eldest son,<br /> +now Earl of Ilchester<br /> +(who succeeds him in honours and estate)<br /> +and a numerous offspring.<br /> +As a small token of her great affection<br /> +to the best of husbands, fathers, friends,<br /> +his disconsolate widow inscribes this marble,</p> +<p style="text-align: center">Sacred to his memory.</p> +<p>Hush’d be the voice of bards who heroes praise,<br /> +And high o’er glory’s sun their pæans raise;<br +/> +And let an artless Muse a friend review,<br /> +Whose tranquil Life one blameless tenour knew,<br /> +By Nature form’d to please, of happiest mien,<br /> +Just, friendly, chearful, affable, serene;<br /> +Engaging Manners, cultivated Mind,<br /> +Adorn’d by Letters and in Courts refin’d,<br /> +His blooming honours long approv’d he bore,<br /> +And added lustre to that gem he wore;<br /> +Grac’d with all pow’rs to shine, he left parade,<br +/> +And unambitious lov’d the sylvan shade;<br /> +<a name="page176"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 176</span>The +choice by Heav’n applauded stood confess’d<br /> +And all his Days with all its blessing bless’d;<br /> +Living belov’d, lamented in his end,<br /> +Unfading Bliss his mortal change attend.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>At the other extremity of the park is the small and secluded +village of Melbury Osmund, the “Little Hintock” of +<i>The Woodlanders</i>, “one of those sequestered spots +outside the gates of the world, where may usually be found more +meditation than action, and more listlessness than +meditation.” It lies among vast hills and profound +hollows, whose huge convexities and corresponding concavities +render this a district to be more comfortably ridden by the +horseman than walked, and one to be explored by the cyclist only +with great and exhausting labour.</p> +<p>By perspiring perseverance, however, Yeovil and Somerset, or, +speaking by the card, “Ivell” and “Outer +Wessex” may be reached at last, by way of the +strangely-entitled village of Ryme Intrinsica, whose name, so +spelled on the map, is, with considerable incertitude both as to +spelling and meaning, said to be properly written +“Entrenseca” or “Entrensicca.” +Local theories, disregarding altogether the inexplicable +“Ryme,” and expending themselves upon the +preposterous Latinity of the second part of the name, have come +to some sort of agreement that it denotes a dry place on a ridge +placed between two watered vales; and those curious enough to +look for it on a large-scale map will perceive readily enough +that, whatever the comparative dryness of the ridge it does +occupy, it is certainly so flanked by the low-lying lands in +which flow two tributaries of the river Yeo.</p> +<p><a name="page177"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +177</span>Hutchins, the county historian, on the other hand, +gives a wholly different explanation of the name. Spelling +the “Intrinseca” with an “e,” instead of +the final “i,” he says it is so called, Ryme +Intrinseca, or “In Ryme,” in contradistinction to an +outlying portion of the old manor, away down in the parish of +Long Bredy, and styled Ryme Extrinsecus, or “Out +Ryme.”</p> +<p>At any rate, Ryme Intrinsica looks scarcely the place to be +dolled out in so classical a style. It is too Saxon, too +rustic and homespun in all its circumstances of thatch, +rickyards, dairies, and pigsties; and its little church is not in +any way corroborative of this dignity.</p> +<p>Yeovil, whose name has so bucolic a sound that it would seem +to be, above all other places, the home most suitable for yeomen, +is the “Ivell” of the Wessex novels, but finds only +scattered allusions in them, and touches far from intimate. +Cope, the curate, who in the story <i>For Conscience’ +Sake</i> married the conscience-smitten Millborne’s +daughter when at last the father effaced himself, was curate at +Ivell; and it was at the “Castle” inn of the same +town that the brothers Halborough called for their drunken +father, in the harrowing embarrassments of <i>A Tragedy of two +Ambitions</i>, but those are the nearest approaches to be +discovered.</p> +<h2><a name="page178"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +178</span>CHAPTER XVII</h2> +<p style="text-align: center" class="gutsumm">SHERBORNE</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Much</span> remains in pleasant Sherborne +to tell of that time when it was a cathedral city, and when, +after it had lost that high dignity, it was of scarce less +importance as the home of a powerful Abbey. It was the +pleasing, well-watered and sheltered situation, in the vale where +the little Yeo or Ivel runs—the stream which, passing +through Yeovil, gives that town its name—that first +attracted the religious in <span class="GutSmall">A.D.</span> +705, the time of that now misty and vague monarch, King +Ina. The Yeo had not yet obtained that name, and was merely +spoken of in descriptive and admiratory phrase as the <i>Seir +burne</i>, an Anglo-Saxon description for a bright and clear +brook which has crystallised here and at several other places in +the country, into a place-name. Even in the City of London +there is a Sherborne Lane, where no stream now flows, the +successor, however, of a pleasant lane, where in Anglo-Saxon +times a tributary of the Wall Brook flowed.</p> +<p>Not every one was satisfied with this choice for a cathedral +site. William of Malmesbury wrote of it as “pleasant +neither by multitudes of inhabitants, nor beauty of +position.” But beauty is a matter of individual +taste. “Wonderful, almost<b> </b><a +name="page179"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +179</span>shameful,” he continued, “was it, that a +bishop’s see should have remained here for so many +years.” For three hundred and three years it so +remained, the bishop’s seat being removed only in 1078, +when Old Sarum, a much more inconvenient site, sterile, cramped +and waterless—a place that to the Saxons was Searobyrig, +the dry city—was selected, only itself to be abandoned in +less than another hundred and fifty years. In the meanwhile +no fewer than twenty-seven bishops ruled in succession at +Sherborne and passed into the Great Beyond, leaving for the most +part, very little evidence of their existence. Notable +exceptions, however, were Adhelm, an early translator of the +Scriptures, and Asser, whose biography of his friend and patron, +Alfred the Great, is a monument to himself as well as to his +subject. In the choir-aisles of the existing Abbey-church +are sundry relics of those prelates, in the shape of ancient +tombs with battered effigies, as near a likeness to them as +possible for the sculptors to produce; and in the retro-choir are +pointed out the spots where Kings Ethelbald and Ethelbert, +brothers and predecessors of King Alfred, lie.</p> +<p>After an interval of uncertainty following the removal of the +bishopric in 1078 to Old Sarum, the cathedral here was in 1139 +made a Benedictine Abbey and rebuilt by Roger, Bishop of Sarum, +who although he might not again remove the cathedral back to +Sherborne, seems to have loved the place, and certainly lavished +much care and labour upon it.</p> +<p>Bishop Roger was a man of energy and determination. +Starting in life as a poor Norman monk, <a +name="page180"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 180</span>he owed his +first important preferment to a curious circumstance. None +could gabble through a mass more speedily than he, and he raced +through a service before Henry I. so quickly, while the king was +anxious to be off a-hunting, that the gratified monarch put him +on the broad high road to advancement, along whose course Roger +travelled far. But, if all had liked him as little as did +the censorious William of Malmesbury, his journeys would have +been short. To that chronicler he was “unscrupulous, +fierce and avaricious,” not content to keep his own, but +eager to grab the goods of others. “Was there +anything contiguous to his property which might be advantageous +to him, he would directly extort it, either by entreaty or +purchase, or, if that failed, by force.” It must have +been well, therefore, to arrange terms with this masterful +personage while he was in the negotiating way, lest he took what +he wanted, without so much as a +“by-your-leave.” The great Norman structure he +erected has largely survived, not only in its ground plan, but in +the essential circumstances of its walling, for although it is +outwardly a building in the Perpendicular phase of Gothic, dating +from the second half of the fifteenth century, that +magnificently-elaborated external show of nave and presbytery is +but a later and more enriched surface, daringly grafted upon the +stern and solemn Norman walls of over three hundred years’ +earlier date.</p> +<p>The history of the great Benedictine Abbey of Sherborne very +clearly retells the old tale of Bury St. Edmunds, of Norwich, and +of many another great monastic centre, by which you see that +these <a name="page181"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +181</span>rich and powerful settlements of the religious were not +generally at peace with the outside worldlings. The causes +of quarrel were many. In some places the monastery was a +harsh and exacting landlord; in others the imposts and hindrances +placed upon the markets, whose tolls in many instances were the +property of the Church, aroused bitter enmity and constant +strife; and in yet more cases the maintenance of forests and game +for the sport of the Lords Abbots gave rise to trouble. +Poachers we have had always with us, and even in those times when +to kill the stag in the Chases was a crime adjudged worthy death +or mutilation, men for sport or sustenance illegally slew the +game. “What shall he have who killed the +deer?” Why, an ear cut off or a nose slit, at the +very least of it.</p> +<p>Here at Sherborne the bitterest quarrel arose from other +causes. It seems that the parish church was situated at the +west end of the Abbey, separated from it only by a door which the +monks, exclusives always, had sought gradually to narrow, with a +view of eventually blocking it up altogether. A question +nearly allied with this was whether the children of the townsfolk +should be baptised in the Abbey or in the parish church, and the +disputes at last grew so raw that the Sherborne burgesses, very +wrothy and spiteful, took to ringing their church-bells so long +and so loudly that on account of the clamour, the monastic +offices could not be carried on. In 1437 the points at +issue were by common consent laid before the Bishop of Salisbury, +who, siding with his own cloth, made an award in favour of the +Abbey. Regarding this decision as an <a +name="page182"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 182</span>injustice, +the townsfolk refused to abide by it; but there were evidently +two parties in the town, for one faction, headed by a stalwart +butcher, broke into the parish church with some of the monks and +reduced the font to fragments. Things then, naturally grew +worse, until, as Leland puts it, “The variance grew to a +plain sedition, until a priest of the town church of All Hallows +shot a shaft with fire into the top of that part of the Abbey +Church of St. Mary that divided the east part that the monks used +from that the townsmen used; and this partition happening at the +time to be thatched in, the roof was set on fire, and +consequently the whole church, the lead and bells melted, was +defaced.”</p> +<p>The Choir was so seriously injured that it was taken down and +rebuilt, but the rest was repaired, and still in some parts shows +traces, in the reddened patches on the beautiful golden-yellow +Ham Hill sandstone of the internal walls, of the +conflagration.</p> +<p>The townsfolk were made to contribute heavily to the cost of +repair and rebuilding; works resulting in a more lovely interior, +both in form and colour, than owned by any other considerable +church in the west. A commonplace person, one no +connoisseur of churches, if asked to convey a general sense of +their interiors by the medium of temperature would reply that +they were cold, for coldness is the effect most often +produced—irrespective of the degrees registered by the +thermometer—by their stonework; but here, though the +mercury shrink down from the tube into close proximity with the +bulb, provocative in most places of shivers, even the most +matter-of-fact, irresponsive to the call of soaring arches, <a +name="page183"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 183</span>painted +windows and delicately poised fretted roof to “lift up your +hearts, O Zion!” feel a grateful sensation of warmth +pervading them, apparently radiating from these walls of richly +hued stone, whose natural colouring seems to fully furnish the +place and render it indifferent to the rigours of the +season. It is a colour compact of all the beautiful hues of +this country of a rich and bountiful Nature: of honey, of apples +and pears golden and russet, of autumn leaves, and of cider and +October ale, with a glint of the sun through it all. It +gives a beautiful and cheerful tone, quick to purge melancholy +and to make the devout happier in their hallelujahs than when in +the cold, if chaste, companionship of Portland stone, the mild +cream purity of the oolite of Bath, the Gregorian richness of the +building stone of Mansfield, or the solemn satisfaction +engendered by the deep red sandstone of Devon.</p> +<p>The exquisite fan-vaulting of Sherborne Abbey, the finest +example of that supremest effort of the last stage of Gothic art, +has no superior elsewhere. That of Henry VII.’s +Chapel at Westminster, and that in St. George’s Chapel at +Windsor, are on a larger scale, and more daring, but, although +generally cited as representative, are not so truly artistic.</p> +<p>The old Pack-Monday fair, still an annual institution at +Sherborne, is a two days’ market, originating with the +completion of the repairs and the vaulting of the nave, under +Abbot Peter de Ramsam, or Rampisham, in 1504. Tradition has +it that, the last stone well and truly laid and the great church +at last again in order, the masons and their <a +name="page184"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 184</span>kind were +paid off and bidden depart by midnight on the Sunday after Old +Michaelmas Day. Accordingly, Pack-Monday fair is opened +every year at the stroke of midnight on the Sunday succeeding +October 10th, to the accompaniment of a din of horn-blowing and +the uncouth banging of tin cans.</p> +<p>Much of the beauty of the Abbey interior is due to the loving +care of the restoration executed by the Digbys of Sherborne +Castle, between 1848 and 1858, at a cost of over +£32,000. The church of All Hallows at the west end, +which caused all the trouble, was demolished after the +dissolution of the monastery, when the Abbey was sold to the town +for use as a parish church and All Hallows itself thereby became +a redundancy. Its situation and its ground-plan can still +be traced on the paths and lawns and on the ragged walls and +makeshift patchwork that serve as West Front to the Abbey.</p> +<p>An ancestor of the restoring Digbys is commemorated by a +pretentious mountain of marble in the south transept, with an +epitaph, written by a bishop, setting forth with much +antithetical rhodomontade his many virtues of activities and +renunciations:</p> +<p>“Here Lyes John, Lord Digby, Baron Digby of Sherborne +and Earl of Briftol. Titles to which ye merit of his +Grandfather firft gave luftre And which he himfelf laid down +unfully’d. He was naturally enclined to avoid the +Hurry of a publick Life, Yet carefull to keep up the port of his +Quality. Was willing to be at eafe, but fcorned +obfcurity. And therefore never made his retirement a +pretence to draw Himfelf within a narrower <a +name="page185"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 185</span>compafs, or +to fhun fuch expence As Charity, Hospitality and his Honour +call’d for. His Religion was that which by <span +class="smcap">Law</span> is Eftablisfhed, and the Conduct of his +life fhew’d the power of it in his Heart. His +distinction from others never made him forget himfelf or +them. He was kind and obliging to his Neighbours, generous +and condefcending to his inferiours, and juft to all +Mankind. Nor had the temptations of honour and pleafure in +this world Strength enough to withdraw his Eyes from that great +Object of his hope, which we reafonably affure ourfelves he now +enjoys.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">MDCICVIII.”</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image184" href="images/p184.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Sherborne Abbey Church" +title= +"Sherborne Abbey Church" + src="images/p184.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>The surroundings of the Abbey closely resemble cathedral +precincts, and lead the well-informed stranger to remember that +Sherborne cherishes hopes of some day being again erected into +the head of a bishop’s see, when that talked-of formation +of a new diocese, carved out of the great territorial domains of +Salisbury and of Bath and Wells, shall be an accomplished +fact.</p> +<p>The usual and properest way of coming to the Abbey, after you +have glimpsed the fine picture it makes looking down Long Street, +is past the Conduit—usually called the Monks’ +Conduit—standing on the pavement of Cheap Street, and +through a time-worn archway and a narrow alley of small shops and +old houses. The Conduit, built about 1360, an open +octangular building greatly resembling a market-cross, was +originally in the centre of the cloister-garth, to the north of +the Abbey, on a part of the site now occupied by the admirable +Grammar School, founded by <a name="page186"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 186</span>Edward VI. from the spoils of the +dissolved monastery, and grown in these days to be one of the +foremost schools of the country.</p> +<p>Cheap Street, the principal thoroughfare of Sherborne, is, +like similar business streets in other West Country towns, +composed of houses of many periods and all sizes. It is +built generally of that sunny Ham Hill ferruginous sandstone, +quarried for many years at Stoke-sub-Hamdon, six miles to the +northwest of Yeovil. That fine old hostelry, the “New +Inn,” now swept away, was built of it. This vanished +house was the original of the “Earl of Wessex,” in +<i>The Woodlanders</i>, in whose yard Giles Winterborne is +observed by his old sweetheart from the balcony, while he is +engaged with the business of cider-making:</p> +<p>“The chief hotel at Sherton Abbas was the “Earl of +Wessex”—a large stone-fronted inn with a yawning arch +under which vehicles were driven by stooping coachmen to back +premises of wonderful commodiousness. The windows to the +street were mullioned into narrow lights, and only commanded a +view of the opposite houses.”</p> +<p>The castle, some distance outside the town to east, adjoining +the village of Castleton, was originally the combined palace and +fortress of the Bishops of Sherborne. The remaining +fragments, on their woody knoll overlooking the Yeo, in what is +now Sherborne Park, are those of the stout keep built by that +ambitious, and unscrupulous Bishop Roger, of Henry I.’s +time. Despite the curse, called down by the equally +ferocious and saintly Osmund, upon any who should dare to +alienate the castle from the bishops of Sherborne, it was wrested +from them <a name="page187"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +187</span>on several occasions, perhaps sometimes in direct +unbelieving challenge to that <i>quis separabit</i>; at others, +certainly, because, in the fashion of the times, the bishops had +taken part in the political troubles, the pitched battles and +weary sieges of contending factions, and, having the ill-luck to +side with the defeated party, suffered with them in body and +estate. For over two hundred years, from 1139 to 1355, it +was thus alienated, and Osmund’s curse slept. Those +who owned the castle were not executed, or imprisoned, or made to +suffer beyond the usual mediæval average, perhaps because +it took no account of developments arising from mitred follies +and errors of judgment. At last, having been Crown property +for many generations, the stronghold and its surrounding lands +were granted to Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, from whom, after a +futile proposal had been made to fight him for it, in gage of +single combat—a fourteenth-century example of +Kingsley’s “muscular Christianity”—it was +purchased by the bishop for 2,500 marks; a cheap lot. +Whether the earl, in Etonian phrase, “funked it,” +imagining the bishop’s steel would be fellow to “the +sword of the Lord and of Gideon,” and as invincible, who +shall say? At any rate, Bishop Wyvil, this strenuous +champion, who feared neither the ordeal of the sword nor of the +purse, entered into the gates of his predecessors of old time, +and died here, after a residence of twenty years. The brass +to his memory, in the north-east transept of Salisbury Cathedral, +displays a representation of Sherborne Castle, with a figure of +the bishop’s champion armed with a battle axe, by which it +will be seen that it was not scandalously, in his own proper +person, <a name="page188"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +188</span>that the bishop was prepared to fight, but by a deputy, +skilled in arms, and supported by the ghostly terrors of that +ancient curse.</p> +<p>And so, in the possession of the bishops of Salisbury who, to +all intents and purposes, and within the meaning of old Oswald, +were successors and representatives of the Bishops of Sherborne, +the castle remained until 1540, when, in the dissolution of +religious houses, it was seized and afterwards granted to the +Lord Protector, the Duke of Somerset. Then the curse seems +to have come into its own again, for Somerset ended, where many +other good and true were cut off, on Tower Hill. Although +subsequently restored to the bishop of Salisbury, it was again +alienated by Bishop Cotton to Sir Walter Raleigh, as payment for +favours and promotion received when that hero and courtier was in +the enjoyment of royal smiles. Raleigh, as every one knows, +ended tragically, after long-drawn misery, in 1618, on the same +spot where Somerset had suffered sixty years earlier. And +well, the superstitious may think, was it that by legal quirks +and quibbles James I. succeeded in chousing Raleigh’s son +out of his inheritance, for the ill-omened possession continued +to work disaster. James bestowed it upon his favourite, the +despicable Robert Carl, Earl of Somerset, who, convicted of being +accessory to the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, was condemned to +die, but was reprieved, and finally released by the timid James, +to die obscurely in 1645. Something of a blundering curse, +this, one may think, to miss scoring a “bull” on so +admirable and easy a mark.</p> +<p>The king then conveyed the property to Digby, <a +name="page189"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 189</span>Earl of +Bristol, the “Earl of Severn” of the slight story of +<i>Anna</i>, <i>Lady Baxby</i>, in <i>A Group of Noble +Dames</i>. When the Civil War broke out, Sherborne Castle +was garrisoned for the king by the Marquis of Hertford, and early +besieged by the Earl of Bedford, on behalf of the +Parliament. It happened here—as so often it did in +their internecine strife—that there were relatives engaged +on either side in this siege. The Earl of Bristol’s +son, George, Lord Digby, was married to the Lady Anne Russell, +sister of the Earl of Bedford. She it was, the “Anna, +Lady Baxby,” of the story, who rode out secretly to her +brother, and told him that if he were determined to reduce the +castle, he “should find his sister’s bones buried in +the ruins.” But the investment continued until, +finding himself weaker than he had supposed, the marquis offered +to surrender on terms. If they were not accepted he +proposed, with the Lady Anne’s consent, and indeed at her +wish, to station her on the battlements, and let the +enemy’s marksmen do their worst. The Earl of Bedford +was not proof against this, and it is said, raising the siege, +retired.</p> +<p>But this plan would not always work. Three years later, +in 1645, when Sir Lewis Dives, the Earl of Bristol’s +stepson, was in command, a greater than the Earl of Bedford +appeared before Sherborne Castle, and summoned it to +surrender. This was Sir Thomas Fairfax, flushed with his +successes, and making a clean sweep of the garrisons in the west +of England. For sixteen days, his forces sat down in front +of the castle, which then surrendered, with its garrison of +fifty-five gentlemen and six hundred soldiers. With that +surrender came the final ruin, <a name="page190"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 190</span>for the castle was +“slighted,” or destroyed by gunpowder, its contents +and the spoils of “the lodge,” sold to the people of +Sherborne. This “Lodge” was the mansion which +even then had been built near by, the castle already proving too +inconvenient for the ideas of those times. It is the +so-called “Castle” of to-day, still the seat of +Digbys, collateral and commoner descendants of the old +owners. Sir Walter Raleigh built the centre portion of it +in 1594, as his arms and the sculptured figures show, and Digbys +the later wings. Their crest, the singular one of an +ostrich holding a horse-shoe in its beak, is prominent over the +entrance to the courtyard. In the park is still shown a +stone seat, said to be that on which Sir Walter Raleigh was +resting and smoking his first pipe of tobacco, when his pipe was +dowsed and he drenched, by the pail of water thrown over him by +his faithful retainer, who, not unnaturally, as tobacco was then +a thing unknown, imagined his master to be on fire, and, in the +expressive words of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade’s +reports, “well alight.”</p> +<p>The Lodge, now the “Castle,” was a halting-place +of the Prince of Orange on his triumphal march from Tor Bay, in +1688. He slept here a night, and from a printing-press in +the house was issued his address to the people of England.</p> +<h2><a name="page191"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +191</span>CHAPTER XVIII</h2> +<p style="text-align: center" class="gutsumm">SHERBORNE TO CERNE +ABBAS AND WEYMOUTH</p> +<p><span class="smcap">It</span> is twenty-six miles from stately +Sherborne, the “Sherton Abbas” of <i>The +Woodlanders</i>, to where Weymouth sits enthroned on the margin +of her circular Bay, and, always supposing that no strong +southerly gale is blowing, there is for the cyclist no easier +route in all the Hardy Country. Bating the steep rise out +of Sherborne and out of the Vale of Blackmore to the chalk +uplands at Minterne Magna, it is a route of favourable gradients, +with one interval of dead level.</p> +<p>The river Yeo is a small stream, but its valley is deep and +wide, as he who, leaving Sherborne, climbs the hills which shut +in that valley, shall find. But a reward comes with the +easy descent to the long, scattered street of rustic cottages at +Long Burton, whence the way lies across a dead level to where, +six miles distant from this point, rise the bastions of the +mid-Dorset heights, seen distinctly from here: Dogbury, with his +convex clump of cresting trees, like a blue-black wig, High Stoy, +where the ridge runs bare, with Nettlecomb Tout and Bulbarrow in +the hazy distance.</p> +<p>It is a straight, and a marshy and low-lying, as well as a +flat road to Holnest, where, beside the <a +name="page192"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 192</span>road, is +Holnest Lodge, belonging to the Erle-Drax family, and one of the +seats of that eccentric person, the late J. S. W. Sawbridge +Erle-Drax, of Charborough Park, long a member of Parliament for +Wareham, and one of the last of the squires. The old time +squires were laws to themselves, and like none others. The +product of generations of other many-acred squires of great +port-drinking propensities and unbounded local influence, whom +all the lickings administered at Eton did not suffice to bring to +a proper sense of their intrinsic unimportance, apart from the +accidental circumstance that they were the lords of their manors, +“old Squire Drax,” as the rustics call him now that +he is dead, might from his high-handed ways have <a +name="page193"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 193</span>formed an +excellent model for a dramatist building up a melodrama of the +old style. He was “the Squire” to the very +<i>n</i>th degree, with so extraordinary an idea of his own +importance that here, on the lawn fronting Holnest Lodge, he +caused to be erected in his own lifetime a memorial to +himself. An inspection of the approach to that residence +will convince any one not only that he was very rich, but very +mad as well. The sweeping drive is bordered at intervals +with statues: Circes, Floras, Ceres, Dianas, and other classical +deities, shining whitely and conspicuously against the grass, and +leading the eye up to the central point where, on a tall imposing +column, guarded by crouching lions, stands the bronze, +frock-coated statue of Squire Drax himself. It is all very +like a kind of higher-class Rosherville, and exceedingly +curious.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image192" href="images/p192.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Long Burton" +title= +"Long Burton" + src="images/p192.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>One has not progressed far along the dead-level road before +another evidence of the Drax swelled head comes in sight. +It is a huge building in the Byzantine style, highly elaborated, +and decorated in a costly way with polished stones. Its +purpose puzzling at first, it is seen on closer approach to stand +in a churchyard and to be a mausoleum. Away back from it +stands in perspective the little church of Holnest, scarce larger +than this gorgeous place prepared by the squire for his rest, and +looking really smaller. The rustics dot the i’s and +cross the t’s of his eccentricity, telling how he had his +coffin made in his lifetime and his funeral rehearsed in front of +the house. The more superstitious declare that the +mausoleum was built so strongly and substantially in order to +foil a certain personage whose desire is rather for the souls +than for the <a name="page194"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +194</span>bodies of his own; and, to support their dark beliefs, +narrate how, canvassing for votes during the progress of an +election the squire declared he had always been a Member of +Parliament, would always be, and would rather go to the Pit with +the initials of M.P. attached to his name than to Heaven without +them. Unfortunately, these wonder-mongers halt a little +short of the completeness desired by dramatic requirements, and +do not proceed to tell us how the election was secured by the +agency of a gentlemanly stranger of persuasive manners and +club-feet, who, upon the declaration of the poll mysteriously +disappeared amid a strong smell of Tandstickör matches.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image194" href="images/p194.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Holnest: the Drax Mausoleum" +title= +"Holnest: the Drax Mausoleum" + src="images/p194.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Advancing, we come at Middlemarsh into the <a +name="page195"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 195</span>country of +<i>The Woodlanders</i>, where dense woodlands now begin to cover +the levels. The long ridge of the downs ahead now grows +stern, steep, and threatening. To the left hand an isolated +protuberance, covered with trees, the oddly named Dungeon Hill, +rises, disclosing from its flanks peeps into the Vale of +Blackmore, where the explorer can, with promptitude and thorough +efficacy, lose himself. Believe one who has been along the +sometimes devious and sometimes straight, but always lonely, +roads of these levels. There, down beyond Dungeon Hill and +Pulham, on a road flat as the alliterative flounder and empty as +a City church, stands at King’s Stag Bridge across the +river Lidden an inn with the sign of the White Hart and a verse +alluding to the origin of the name <a name="page196"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 196</span>of “Vale of White Hart” +given to this part of the greater Vale of Blackmore—</p> +<blockquote><p>“When Julius Cæsar Reigned here, I was +but then a little Deer.<br /> +When Julius Cæsar Reigned King, around my Neck he put this +Ring.<br /> +Whoever doth me overtake, Oh! spare my life, for +Cæsar’s sake.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image195" href="images/p195.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Dungeon Hill and the Vale of Blackmore" +title= +"Dungeon Hill and the Vale of Blackmore" + src="images/p195.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>The classic historian of Dorsetshire tells us something of the +story thus darkly reflected. According to his account, +corrected in details from other sources, it seems that King Henry +III. hunting in what was then a forest, rounded up, among several +other deer, a particularly beautiful white hart, whose life he +spared for future hunting. Somewhat later, Sir John de la +Lynde, Bailiff of Blackmore Forest, a neighbouring gentleman of +ancient descent and local importance, out hunting with a party, +roused the same animal, and, less pitiful than the king, killed +it at the end of a long pursuit, at the spot ever after called +King’s Stag Bridge. The king, highly offended, not +only punished Sir John de la Lynde and his companions with +imprisonment and heavy fines, but taxed their lands severely and +permanently, so that for many later generations the fine of White +Hart Silver continued to be paid into the Exchequer. +Another historian, the quaint and amusing Fuller, in giving his +version, states that the whole county was laid under +contribution. “Myself,” he says whimsically +“hath paid a share for the sauce who never tasted the +meat.” It is stated that “White Hart +Silver” was levied until the reign of Henry VII.</p> +<p>The road, passing a signpost weirdly directing <a +name="page197"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 197</span>to +“Giant’s Head,” ascends a steep hill, perhaps +the ‘Rubdon Hill’ of <i>The Woodlanders</i>, and the +Lyon’s Gate Hill of actual fact, down which, into the vale +on that autumnal day went Fitzpiers, the infatuated +surgeon—a Dorsetshire Tannhäuser, thinking of the +Venus who had bewitched him, and careless of the beauty of the +season—when “the earth was now at the supreme moment +of her bounty. In the poorest spots the hedges were bowed +with haws and blackberries; acorns cracked underfoot, and the +burst husks of chestnuts lay exposing their auburn contents as if +arranged by anxious sellers for the market.” Steeply +upward continues the hill, to the ridge of the mid-Dorset +heights, whence Blackmore Vale, of which it is very truly said +that “an unguided ramble into its recesses in bad weather, +is apt to engender dissatisfaction with its narrow, tortuous, and +miry ways,” is seen spreading out like an unrolled map.</p> +<p>“This fertile and sheltered tract of country, in which +the fields are never brown, and the springs never dry,” is +bounded on the south by the bold chalk ridge that embraces the +prominences of Hambledon Hill, Bulbarrow, Nettlecombe-Tout, +Dogbury, High Stoy, and Bubb Down. There “in the +valley, the world seems to be constructed upon a smaller and more +delicate scale; the fields are mere paddocks, so reduced that +from this height their hedgerows appear a network of dark green +threads overspreading the paler green of the grass. The +atmosphere beneath is languorous, and is so tinged with azure +that what artists call the middle distance partakes also of that +hue, while the horizon beyond is of the deepest +ultramarine. Arable lands <a name="page198"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 198</span>are few and limited; with but slight +exceptions the prospect is a broad rich mass of grass and trees, +mantling minor hills and dales within the major. Such is +the Vale of Blackmore.”</p> +<p>The village of Minterne Magna that, with its fine trees and +the seat of Lord Digby, has so handsome a presence, is the +“Great Hintock” of <i>The Woodlanders</i>. Poor +loyal-hearted Giles Winterbourne, “a good man, who did good +things,” was buried here, beside that ivy-covered +church-tower overlooking the road, and now bearing the +inscription</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: center">“<span +class="GutSmall">LE TEMPS PASSE</span><br /> +<span class="GutSmall">L’AMITIE RESTE</span><br /> +1888<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">IN MEMORIAM H.R.D.</span>”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>They laid him to rest “on the top of that hill looking +down into the Vale,” to whose villages he had, as autumn +came round, been wont to descend with his portable cider-mill and +press; and Grace rejoined her husband, and the world went on as +usual. Only Marty South remembered him and treasured his +memory.</p> +<p>At Minterne Magna, otherwise “Great Hintock,” +according to a rustic character, “you do see the world and +life,” whereas, at Little Hintock, to be identified with +Melbury Osmund, away down at Evershot, “’tis such a +small place that you’d need a candle and lantern to find +it, if ye don’t know where ’tis.”</p> +<p>But, at the same time, outside the pages of novels Minterne +Magna is not a place of stir and movement, and is great only in +name.</p> +<p>From just before Minterne Magna there is a <a +name="page199"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 199</span>left-hand +turning which affords an alternative route to Dorchester, +avoiding Cerne Abbas, and going exposedly over the haggard +downs. The two routes are locally known as the overhill and +the underhill roads. The first-named is now little +travelled, and its old house of entertainment, the Revels inn, a +thing of the past. This, “the forsaken coach-road +running in an almost meridional line from Bristol to the south +shore of England,” is the route of the escaped prisoner and +the scene of “Higher Crowstairs” in the intense story +of <i>The Three Strangers</i>. On that route you see better +than anywhere else, those “calcareous downs” +described by the novelist, where “the hills are open, the +sun blazes down upon fields so large as to give an unenclosed +character to the landscape, the lanes are white, the hedges low +and splashed, the atmosphere colourless.” It is, by +the same token, of an exhausting dryness in summer, and in winter +only to be undertaken by the most robust.</p> +<p>By the ‘underhill’ road on the other hand, the ten +miles from Minterne to Dorchester are chiefly on a gentle +descent. Presently, therefore, one reaches Cerne Abbas, the +“Abbot’s Cernel” of <i>Tess</i> and other +stories, situated in a fine widening of the valley through which +the river Cerne flows, with the gaunt bare shoulders of the great +chalk downs receding far enough to lose something of their +asperity, and to gain in distance all the atmosphere and softened +outlines of an impressionistic picture. From the south, +half a mile beyond the decayed town of Cerne, a very beautiful +view of this nature opens out, by the roadside. There the +fine tower of the church stands out against the sage-green <a +name="page200"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 200</span>coloration +of the hills, and with the luxuriant trees and the nestling farms +of the valley, presents by force of contrast with the bare +uplands a striking picture of comfort, prosperity, and +hospitality, not perhaps warranted in every one of those respects +by a closer acquaintance. For Cerne is a place very hardly +treated by heartless circumstance.</p> +<p>Many centuries ago, in <span class="GutSmall">A.D.</span> 987 +to be exact, a Benedictine Abbey was founded here by Ethelmar, +Earl of Devon and Cornwall, upon the site of a hermitage +established by Ædwold, brother of that East Anglican saint, +Edmund the King and Martyr. It does not appear what became +of the hermit, whether those who established the abbey bought him +out, or threw him out; but it certainly seems to demand enquiry, +the more especially that hermits and abbots, pious founders and +holy monks were not altogether so unbusinesslike in their worldly +affairs as the uninstructed might imagine. The hermit +probably received due compensation for disturbance and went off +somewhere else. However that may be, the abbey grew and +flourished. Canute certainly despoiled it, but more than +made amends, by large gifts and endowments of other +people’s property, when he had been brought to see the +error of his ways and that plundering—plundering the +property of the church, at least—was wrong. And so +the business of the abbey progressed through the centuries, to +the daily accompaniment of the monks chanting “their +wonderful piff-and-paff” as the librettist of <i>The Golden +Legend</i> makes the devil say of it.</p> +<p>In 1471 Henry VI.’s Queen, Margaret of Anjou, striving +desperately, brave heart, on her son’s behalf, fled for +shelter here, up the road from Weymouth, <a +name="page201"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 201</span>where she +had landed from France; but, indeed, little else of history +belongs to this sometime rich and splendid abbey in the heart of +the hills. It afforded shelter and protection to the +townlet of Cerne that had sprung up outside its precincts; and +great therefore was the dismay when ruin overtook it in the time +of Henry VIII. The abbey disestablished, the town of course +also suffered. How greatly we do not know; but it plucked +up courage again and refused to die, and when England was still +that exceedingly uncomfortable England of coaching times, +flourished in a modest way on the needs of travellers for succour +and shelter on the exhausting journeys that are so romantic to +read of in Christmas numbers, but were the terror of those who +could not possibly stop at home.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image201" href="images/p201.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Cerne Abbas" +title= +"Cerne Abbas" + src="images/p201.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p><a name="page202"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 202</span>And +at last the coaches ceased and railways came to the country in +general, but not to Cerne. It is still, to-day, remote from +railways and is thus hit several severe, separate, and distinct +blows by Fate, which, when travellers no longer needed its +shelter, took away its chief reason for existence, refused it the +reinvigorating boon of a railway, and then, in the general +depression of agriculture, has dealt a final and staggering +buffet. Cerne is dead. There is (assuming for the +moment positive, comparative, and superlative degrees of +deadness) no deader townlet in England, and it has all the +interest, and commands all the respect due to the departed. +<i>De mortuis nil nisi bonum</i>, and if there were hard things +to be said of Cerne, they should not here be uttered. But +there are no such things for utterance. It has all the +romance of the bygone that appeals to the artist, and I love to +dwell upon and in it. It is a place where commercialism +has, or should have, no part, and therefore, when I pass a +noble-looking farmhouse and a somewhat stately landlady comes out +with a key, asking me—with an eye upon the perquisite of +the fee exacted—if I would like to see the Abbey Gatehouse, +I refuse; earning thereby the keen contempt shown on her +expressive face. Soulless Goth, to wander about Cerne and +not see the Gatehouse! Ah! my dear lady, your contempt is +misplaced. I love these things better than you imagine, but +I hate commercialism—and in such unexpected +places—the more. The abbey ruins, wholly summed up in +that Gatehouse, are at the extremity of this dead town, but there +is a fine parish church in the centre of its streets. A +noble, highly decorated tower is that <a name="page203"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 203</span>belonging to it, one of the finest +productions of the Perpendicular period, with bold gargoyles, +whose gaping mouths are for the most part stopped with +birds’ nests. Decay and ruin squat next door, in the +shape of one of Cerne’s wrecked and unroofed houses, so +long in that condition as to have become a terrace on which wild +flowers luxuriantly grow and display themselves to passing +admiration. It will be observed that there are +shops—or things in the specious and illusory shape of +shops—in this town of Yester-year. They indeed were +so once, but the shopkeepers have long ceased from their +shopkeeping. The windows, perhaps retained over against +that time when Cerne shall be resurrected—for +Fortune’s wheel still spins, and will come full circle some +day—are meanwhile excellent for displaying geraniums.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image202" href="images/p202.jpg"> +<img alt= +"The Gatehouse, Cerne Abbey" +title= +"The Gatehouse, Cerne Abbey" + src="images/p202.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p> +<a name="image203" href="images/p203.jpg"> +<img class='floatleft' alt= +"The Cerne Giant" +title= +"The Cerne Giant" + src="images/p203.jpg" /> +</a>Prominent in most views of Cerne Abbas is that weird figure +of a man on the hillside which gives an alternative name to +Trendle or Giant’s Hill. The “Giant of +Cerne” is a big fellow, well deserving his name, for he is +180 feet high. No one knows who cut him on the chalk of the +hillside, but local tradition has long told how the figure +commemorated the destruction of a giant who, feasting on the +sheep of Blackmore, laid himself down here, in the sleep of +repletion, and was then, like another Gulliver, pinioned where he +lay by the enraged <a name="page204"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +204</span>peasantry, who killed him and immediately traced his +dimensions for the information of posterity. The prominence +of his ribs, however, says little for the result of his +feeding.</p> +<p>A more instructed opinion is that the figure represents Heil, +a god of the pagan Saxons, and that it was cut before <span +class="GutSmall">A.D.</span> 600. Fearful legends belong to +it: tales of horror narrating how the border enclosing the effigy +is the ground plan of a stout wicker-work cage in which the pagan +priests imprisoned many victims, whom they offered up as burnt +sacrifices to their god.</p> +<p>Looked upon with awe and wonder by the peasantry of old, who +cleaned him once every seven years, the Giant is now regarded by +them with indifference and left alone, and it is only the +stranger who finds himself obsessed with a strange awe as he +gazes upon this mystic relic of a prehistoric age. His +minatory and uncouth appearance—for the relation of his +head to his body is that of a pea to a melon—perhaps even +more than his size, impresses the beholder. It should be +said that he is merely traced in outline on the turf, in lines +two feet broad and one foot deep, and not laid bare, a huge white +shape, to the sky. The club he wields is 120 feet long, and +from seven to twenty-four feet broad.</p> +<h2><a name="page205"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +205</span>CHAPTER XIX</h2> +<p style="text-align: center" class="gutsumm">SHERBORNE TO CERNE +ABBAS AND WEYMOUTH<br /> +(<i>continued</i>)</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Past</span> Nether Cerne and Godmanstone, +the road leads, consistently straight and on a down gradient, to +Charminster, where, in consonance with the place-name, a +minster-like church stands. It is rich in monuments of the +Trenchards—bearing their motto, <i>Nosce Teipsum</i>, Know +Thyself—of the neighbouring historic mansion of Wolveton, +one of whom—a Sir Thomas—built the tower, in or about +the year 1500, as duly attested on the building itself, which +displays his cypher of two T’s.</p> +<p>Wolveton, standing in the rich level water-meadows where the +rivers Cerne and Frome come to a confluence, is, as the Man of +Family narrates in the story of <i>The Lady Penelope</i>, in <i>A +Group of Noble Dames</i>, “an ivied manor-house, flanked by +battlemented towers, and more than usually distinguished by the +size of its mullioned windows. Though still of good +capacity, the building is much reduced from its original grand +proportions; it has, moreover, been shorn of the fair estate +which once appertained to its lord, with the exception of a few +acres of park-land immediately around the mansion. <a +name="page206"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 206</span>This was +formerly the seat of the ancient and knightly Drenghards, or +Drenkhards, now extinct in the male line, whose name, according +to the local chronicles, was interpreted to mean <i>Strenuus +Miles</i>, <i>vel Potator</i>, though certain members of the +family were averse to the latter signification, and a duel was +fought by one of them on that account, as is well +known.”</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image206" href="images/p206.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Cerne Abbas" +title= +"Cerne Abbas" + src="images/p206.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>The Lady Penelope, who jestingly promised to marry all three +of her lovers in turn, and by that jest earned such misery when +Fate ordained that her words should come true, was an actual +living character. A daughter of Lord Darcy, she in turn +married George Trenchard, Sir John Gage, and Sir William +Hervey. As the story truly tells, the Drenghards, or rather +Trenchards, are extinct in the male line.</p> +<p>Passing by Poundbury, the “Pummery” of Dorset +speech, we enter Dorchester, already described at <a +name="page207"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +207</span>considerable length, and, passing down South Street and +by the Amphitheatre, of gloomy associations, come out upon the +Weymouth—or, as Mr. Hardy would say the +“Budmouth”—road.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image207" href="images/p207.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Wolveton House" +title= +"Wolveton House" + src="images/p207.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>For the distance of close upon a mile this Roman road, the +chief means of communication between their seaport station of +Clavinium, near Weymouth, and their inland town of Durnovaria, +runs on the level, bordered by the fine full-grown elms of one of +Dorchester’s many avenues. Then it sets out with a +grim straightness to climb to the summit of that geological +spine, the Ridgeway, which places so stubborn an obstacle on +these nine miles of road that many a faint-hearted pilgrim from +Dorchester fails to reach Weymouth, and many another from +Weymouth gives up the task at less than half-way.</p> +<p><a name="page208"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +208</span>Climbing here, the vast mass of Maiden Castle rises on +the right, conferring a solemnity upon the scene, due not so much +to the bulk given it by nature as to the amazing ditches, mounds, +scarps, and counterscarps terraced along its mighty bosom +by—ay, by whom? Many peoples had a hand in the making +of this great fortification. The British Durotriges are +said to have styled it “Mai-Dun,” the “Castle +of the great Hill,” and to have established their capital +here; and at a later date the Romans camped upon it and must have +cursed the Imperialism which brought them here to wilt and wither +in face of the bitter blasts of an inclement land.</p> +<p>It was the Dunium of Ptolemy, and has been the wonder of many +ages, not easily able to understand by what enormous expenditure +of effort all these great mounds were heaped up and what enemies +they feared who delved the ditches so deeply and ramped the +ridges so steeply and so high.</p> +<p>Maiden Castle is still occupied, although the last defender +left it perhaps a thousand years ago; for as the curious +traveller to these prehistoric earthworks climbs exhaustedly up +the steep rises, over the short grass, he may see the rabbits +mounting guard by thousands against the skyline, or fleeing +panic-stricken, in admirable open order, showing myriads of white +flags formed by their tails as they go loping away over the +field.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image209" href="images/p209.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Weymouth and Portland, from the Ridgeway" +title= +"Weymouth and Portland, from the Ridgeway" + src="images/p209.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>As one progresses, more and more slowly with the acuter +gradient, up the roadway, the church-tower of Winterborne +Monkton, among its encircling barns, ricks, and cow-byres, comes +into view, <a name="page210"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +210</span>the observer’s eye on a higher level than the +rooftop. Village there is none, and the clergyman who on +Sundays conducts services here must do so—between the peals +of the organ, and in midst of the quieter-spoken passages of +morning and evening prayers—to the commentatory lowing of +cattle or the grunts of pigs, sounding like the observations of +grudging critics. There was once a saint who, like a broody +hen that will nurse strange things, preached to the fowls of the +air and the beasts of the field, and the spiritual shepherd of +Winterborne Monkton not infrequently has among his congregation a +barn owl, and a cheerful concourse of sparrows in the roof, much +given to brawling in church.</p> +<p>Roman directness was all very well, but later races found it +much too trying for their horses, and thus we find, nearing the +summit, that the straight ancient road across the ridgeway has +long been abandoned, except by the telegraph-poles, for a cutting +through the crest and an S curve down the southern and much +steeper side. This expedient certainly eases both ascent +and descent, but it does not suffice to render the way less than +extremely fatiguing to climb and nerve-shaking to descend.</p> +<p>As a view-point it has remarkable features, for the whole +expanse of Portland Roads, the Isle of Portland, and the site on +which Weymouth and Melcombe Regis are built are exposed to gaze, +very much as though the spectator looking down upon them were +bending in an examination of some modelled map of physical +geography. White spires at Weymouth and equally white +groups of houses at Portland gain striking effects from +backgrounds of grey rock or the dark green of trees, massed by <a +name="page211"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 211</span>distance to +the likeness of dense forests; and the mile-lengths of harbour +walls and breakwaters, punctuated with forts, out in the +roadstead are shrunken by distance to the likeness of a cast +seine-net supported by cork floats. On a ridge inland a row +of circular ricks with peaked roofs showing against the sea looks +absurdly like beehives, and down there in the middle distance is +the curving line of embankment where the railway from Dorchester +goes, after piercing the hill on which we stand by the Bincombe +Tunnel.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image211" href="images/p211.jpg"> +<img alt= +"The Wishing Well, Upwey" +title= +"The Wishing Well, Upwey" + src="images/p211.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p><a name="page212"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +212</span>Descending the hill, we come to the valley of the +Wey. The older part of the village of Upwey marks the +source of that little stream to the right, and the newer part, +with the village of Broadwey, are scarcely to be distinguished +from one another, ahead. The original Upwey, the Upwey of +the “Wishing Well,” lies under the flanks of a great +down, where, if you climb and climb and continue climbing, you +will presently discover the poppy-like scarlet buildings of the +Weymouth waterworks. But there is no need to seek them +while the Wishing Well, nearer to hand, calls.</p> +<p>The “Wishing Well” is a pretty spot, overhung with +trees and still a place resorted to by tourists, who either +shamefacedly, with an implied half-belief in its virtues, drink +its waters, or else with the quip and jest of unbelief, defer the +slaking of their thirst until the nearest inn is reached, where +liquors more palatable to the sophisticated taste—or what +Mr. Hardy’s rustics would term “a cup of +genuine”—are obtainable. Once the haunt of +gipsies, who used the well as a convenient pitch, and, when you +crossed their palms with silver in the approved style, prophesied +fulfilment of the nicest things you could possibly wish +yourself—and a good many other things that would never +occur to you at all—it is now quite unexploited, save +perhaps by a little village girl, who, with a glass tumbler, will +save the devotee from stooping on hands and knees and lapping up +the magic water, like a dog. The gipsies have been all +frightened away by the Vagrants Act, and no great loss to the +community in general. The inquisitive stranger, curious to +know whether the villagers themselves <a name="page213"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 213</span>resort to their famous Fount of +Heart’s Desire, receives a rude shock when he is told by +one of them that, “Bless ’ee, there baint a +varden’s wuth o’ good in ’en, at arl. +Mebbe ’tis good ver a whist (a stye) but all them +’ere magicky tales be done away wi’.” The +Age of Faith is dead.</p> +<p>And so into Weymouth, down a road lined with long rows of +suburbs. Radipole is come to this complexion at last, and +its spa is, like a service rendered and a benefit conferred, a +thing clean forgot.</p> +<h2><a name="page214"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +214</span>CHAPTER XX</h2> +<p style="text-align: center" class="gutsumm">WEYMOUTH</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Well</span>, then, here, reaching a Modern +church with a tall spire, surrounded by suburban villas, is the +beginning of Weymouth. The sea in these miles has dropped +gradually down, out of sight as the road comes to the level, and +at this point you might, to all intents and purposes, be at North +Kensington, which the spot greatly resembles. But turning +sharply with the road to the right the derogatory illusion is at +once dispelled, for the sea is out there, sparkling, to the left; +and, in the perfect segment of a circle, the Esplanade of +Weymouth goes sweeping round to the harbour, with the Nothe Point +fort above, and, away out in the distance, that towering knob of +limestone, the Isle of Portland. It is a stimulating view, +and has generally other and even more stimulating constituents +than those of nature, for Weymouth and Portland are places of +arms, and the ships of the Navy are usually represented by a +squadron of cruisers well in shore, with a brace or two of +battleships coming, going, or anchored easily in sight, and +numbers of those ugly, imp-like craft, torpedo-boats, flying +hither and thither.</p> +<p><a name="page215"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +215</span>Weymouth styles itself—or others style +it—“the Naples of England,” but no one has ever +yet found Naples returning the compliment and calling itself +“the Weymouth of Italy.” There is really no +reason why Weymouth, instead of seeking some fanciful resemblance +based solely, it may be supposed on the configuration of its +widely curving bay, should not stand or fall by the sufficing +attractions of its own charming self. For one thing, it +would be impossible to persuade the public that Weymouth owns a +Vesuvius somewhere away in its <i>hinterland</i>, and, although +the country is rich in Roman camps, no antiquary has yet +discovered a Pompeii midway between Melcombe Regis and +Dorchester.</p> +<p>The town is still in essentials the Weymouth of George III., +the “Budmouth” of Thomas Hardy. They are, it is +true, the battleships of Edward VII. wallowing out there, like +fat pigs, where of yore the wooden men-o’-war swam the +waters like swans; but the houses at least, that face the +Esplanade in one almost unbroken row, each one like its neighbour +and all absolutely innocent either of taste or pretension, are +characteristically Georgian. Taken individually and +examined, one might go greater lengths, and say such a house was +more than insipid and commonplace—was, indeed, downright +ugly—but in a long curving row the effect is a +comprehensive one of dignified restraint. At any rate, they +are constructed of good honest dull red brick, and not plastered +and made to look like stone. This bluff honesty in these +days of shams and of restless, worried-looking designs, when +every new building must have its own ready-made picturesqueness, +and this total absence of <a name="page216"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 216</span>anything and everything that by +remotest chance could be thought an ornament, is grateful.</p> +<p>We speak of this as “Weymouth,” but it is rather, +to speak by the card, Melcombe Regis, and although the interests +of both this and of Weymouth proper, on the other side of the +narrow neck of harbour, are now pooled, it was once a sign of +ignorance and a certain offence not to carefully distinguish +between the two. Their rivalries and jealousies were of old +so bitter that the river-mouth and harbour, long since bridged to +make a continuous street, was like a stream set between two alien +states. The passage was then “by a bote and a rope +bent over ye haven, so y<sup>t</sup> in ye fery bote they use no +ores.”</p> +<p>These disputes and contentions had risen almost to the +condition of a smouldering petty local warfare in the time of +Queen Elizabeth, when means were taken to put an end to it. +Thus in 1571 they were compelled to unite, and in the familiar +phrase of fairy tales have “lived happily ever +after.” Says Camden: “These stood both some +time proudlie upon their owne severall priviledges, and were in +emulation one of the other, but now, tho’ (God turne it to +the good of both!) many, they are, by authoritie of Parliament, +incorporated into one bodie, conjoyned by late by a bridge, and +growne very much greater and goodlier in buildings and by sea +adventures than heretofore.”</p> +<p>But things widely different from trade have in later times +made the fortune of the conjoined towns of Weymouth and Melcombe +Regis. I suppose the one or the other of them was bound in +the course of time to be “discovered” as a +bathing-resort, <a name="page217"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +217</span>but it is to George III. that Weymouth owes a deep debt +of gratitude. His son had already “discovered” +Brighthelmstone, or rather, had placed the seal of his approval +upon Dr. Russel’s earlier discovery of it; and likewise +Weymouth was already on the road to recognition when George III. +came here first, in 1789. Thirty years or so earlier, when +people had begun as a strange new experience, to bathe, the sands +of Weymouth—or to adopt an attitude of strict correctitude, +the sands of Melcombe Regis—were on the way to +appreciation. Then greater folks lending their august +patronage where that of meaner people had little weight, the +place was resorted to by the famous Ralph Allen of Bath, for whom +in 1763 the first bathing-machine was constructed, and by a +stream of visitors gradually ascending in the social scale. +The place long found favour with the Duke of Gloucester, by whose +recommendation the king was induced to make a visit and then a +lengthy stay, placing the apex at last upon this imposing pyramid +of good fortune. It was no fleeting glimpse of royal favour +thus accorded, for with the coming of summer the king for many +years resided here at Gloucester Lodge, the mansion facing the +sea built by his brother the Duke of Gloucester, and now the +staid and grave Gloucester Hotel. Weymouth basked happily +in the splendours of that time. They were splendours of the +respectable domestic sort generally associated with that homely +monarch, who bathed from his machine in full view of his loyal +lieges and then went home to boiled mutton and turnips. He +made sober holiday on the Dorset coast while his graceless son +was on the coast of Sussex rearing a <a name="page218"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 218</span>fantastical palace and playing +pranks fully matching it in extravagance of design and purse.</p> +<p>Weymouth’s return for all these favours is still to be +seen, in the bronze group erected by the townsfolk in 1809, to +celebrate the generally joyful occasion of his Jubilee, to +perpetuate the especial gratitude of the people for favours +received, and in hopes of more to come.</p> +<p>Weymouth very closely reflects the prosperity of that great +era, in the Georgian streets, the quaintly bowed windows of +private houses and the now old-world shop-fronts, many of them +exquisite examples of the restrained taste and aptitude for just +proportion in design characteristic of that age, and only now +beginning to be appreciated at their true worth. It was the +age of the Adams brothers, of Chippendale and Sheraton; an age +rightly come to be regarded in our time as classic in all things +in the domain of architecture and decoration. In its +unaltered purlieus Weymouth is thus singularly like the older +parts of Brighton, but now richer in vestiges of the Georgian +period than the larger and more changeful town.</p> +<p>That, doubtless, was a period of inflated prices in +Weymouth. King, queen, and princesses, fashionables and +many soldiers sent up the ideas of tradesfolk just as the sun +expands the mercury of a thermometer. Uncle Benjy, in +<i>The Trumpet Major</i>, found Budmouth a place where money flew +away doubly as quick as it did when the famous Scot visited +London and “hadna’ been there a day when bang went +saxpence.” At Budmouth in the time of Farmer George, +it was a “shilling for this and a shilling for that; if you +only eat one egg or even a poor windfall of an apple, +you’ve got to pay; and <a name="page220"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 220</span>a bunch o’ radishes is a +halfpenny, and a quart o’ cider a good tuppence +three-farthings at lowest reckoning. Nothing without +paying!” Ay! but if prices were no higher than these, +’twas no such ruinous place, after all. Poor Uncle +Benjy!</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image219" href="images/p219.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Weymouth Harbour" +title= +"Weymouth Harbour" + src="images/p219.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>The most striking differences in physical geography between +the constituent parts of Weymouth are that Melcombe Regis, here +on the shore is flat as a pancake, and Weymouth, there on +t’other side of the harbour, is as hilly as a +house-roof. You could have no greater dissimilarity than +that between the prudish formality which stands for the Melcombe +front and the heaped-up terraces of houses of every description +at Weymouth, which has no front at all; unless indeed the lowest +tier of houses skirting the harbour and its quays, and looking +into the back alleys and quays of Melcombe may so be +styled. In those old days, to which Weymouth dates back, no +seaside town could afford so assailable a luxury as a +“front,” and the older quarters of nearly all such +are generally found, as here, folded away under the lee of a +bluff, or thinly lining the shores of an estuarial harbour. +Here the Nothe Point, with its fort mounted with heavy guns, is +the rocky bluff behind which the old town cowered from elemental +and human foes, and that estuary, both by reason of its narrow +entrance, and those great forts of the Nothe and Portland, has +never been one sought by an enemy’s ship.</p> +<p>The harbour is not uninteresting: what harbour ever is? +The comings and goings of ships have their own romance, and bring +rumours of all kinds of outer worlds and strange peoples. +You look across from the quays of Weymouth to the quays <a +name="page221"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 221</span>of +Melcombe, and there, beside the walls and the old warehouses, lie +the ships from many home and foreign ports, their names duly to +be read under their counters. Whence they individually +come, I do not greatly care to know. This one may only have +come from the Channel Islands with a consignment of early +potatoes: and, on the other hand, it may have won home again +after who knows what romantic doings at the Equator or within the +Arctic Zone. It may have brought treasure-trove, or on the +other hand be merely carrying ordinary commercial freights, at so +low a figure that the owners are dissatisfied and the skipper +gloomy. It is well, you see, to leave a little margin for +fancy when the good ship has come to port once more and within +sight and the easiest reach of those two great features of a +Christian and a civilised land: the Church and the Public +House.</p> +<p>In these days the town is recovering at last from the +undeserved neglect into which it fell after the illness and death +of George III. and from later disasters and indifferences; and, +what with improved railway travelling, and the added interest it +obtains from being selected as the site of a new great national +harbour where more than ever the ships of the Navy will come and +go, has a great future before it.</p> +<h2><a name="page222"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +222</span>CHAPTER XXI</h2> +<p style="text-align: center" class="gutsumm">THE ISLE OF +PORTLAND</p> +<p><span class="smcap">To</span> the generality of untravelled +folk, Portland is nothing but a quarry and a prison. It is +both and more. It is, for one additional thing, a fortress, +in these times grown to a considerable strength, and, for +another, is a singular outlying corner of England tethered to the +mainland only by that seemingly precarious stretch of pebbles, +the Chesil Beach. As Weymouth is peculiarly the scene of +<i>The Trumpet Major</i>, so Portland, the “Isle of +Slingers,” as Mr. Hardy calls it, is especially, though not +with absolute exclusiveness, the district of <i>The Well +Beloved</i>.</p> +<p>There is a choice of ways to Portland. You may go by the +high road—and a very steep up and down road it is, +too—past Wyke, or may proceed by the crumbling clifflets +past Sandsfoot Castle, one of those blockhouse coastward +fortresses stretching from Deal and Sandown Castles, in Kent, +along the whole of the south coast, to this point, whose building +we owe to the panic that possessed the nation in the time of +Henry VIII.: one of those periodic fears of a French invasion +that from time to time have troubled the powers that be. +Two of the long series were placed in this neighbourhood; <a +name="page223"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 223</span>the +so-styled “Portland Castle” at the base of the Isle +of Portland itself, and this craggy ruin of Sandsfoot, roofless +and rough and more cliff-like than the cliffs themselves, at the +mainland extremity of this sheltered inlet, wherein, in days of +yore, an enemy might conceivably have effected a lodgment. +For the defence of this fort, when new-builded in the Eighth +Harry’s time, there were to be provided “the nombre +of xv hable footmen, well furneyshed for the warres, as +appertayneth,” together with some “harchers” +duly furnished, or “harmed” as the summons might have +put it, with their “bows and harrowes.” Alas! +poor overworked letter H!</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image223" href="images/p223.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Sandsfoot Castle" +title= +"Sandsfoot Castle" + src="images/p223.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p><a name="page224"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 224</span>It is +here, in the story of <i>The Well Beloved</i>, that Jocelyn +Pierston, the weirdly constituted hero of that fantastic romance, +elects to bid farewell to Avice Caro, and past it Anne Garland +went on her way to Portland Bill, “along the coast road to +Portland.” When she had reached the waters of the +Fleet, crossed now by a bridge, she had to ferry over, and from +thence to walk that causeway road whose mile-and-three-quarters +of flatness, bounded sideways by the expressionless blue of the +summer sky and the equally vacant vastnesses of the yellow +pebbles of the Chesil Beach, seems to foot-passengers an image of +eternity. It is but a flat road, less than two miles long, +but the Isle ahead seems to keep as far off as ever, and the way +is so bald of incident that a sea-poppy growing amid the pebbles +is a change for the eye, a piece of driftwood a landmark, and a +chance boat or capstan a monument.</p> +<p>But even the Chesil Beach has an end, and at last one reaches +Portland and Fortune’s Well, referred to in that story of +the Portlanders as “the Street of Wells.” The +well—a wishing well of the good, or the bad, old sort, +where you wished for your heart’s desire, and perhaps +obtained the boon in the course of a lifetime—by striving +and labouring for it—is behind that substantial inn, the +Portland Arms, and it is a cynical commentary upon this and all +such legends of faëry that, while the Portlanders in +general, and the people of Fortune’s Well in particular, +can one and all direct you to the inn, if so be you are bat-like +enough not to perceive it for yourself, very few of them know +anything at all of the magic spring, of where it is, or that the +<a name="page225"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 225</span>place +took its name from the existence of such a thing.</p> +<p>One circumstance, above all other curious and interesting +circumstances of this so-called “Isle” of Portland, +is calculated to impress the stranger with astonishment. +Its giant forts; its great convict establishment, “the +retreat, at their country’s expense, of geniuses from a +distance,” the odd nexus of almost interminable pebble +beach that tethers it to the mainland and makes the name of +“Isle” a misnomer, are all fitting things for +amazement; but no one previously uninformed on the point is at +all likely to have any conception of its numerous villages and +hamlets and the large populations inhabiting this grim, +forbidding, “solid and single block of limestone four miles +long.” Eleven thousand souls live and move and have +their being on what the uninstructed, gazing across the Roads +from Weymouth, might be excused for thinking a penitential rock, +reserved for forts and garrison artillery, and for convicts and +those whose business it is to keep them in order. The +number of small villages or hamlets is itself in the nature of a +surprise. Entering upon this happily styled +“Gibraltar of Wessex,” there is in the foreground, by +the railway-station, Chesilton; succeeded by Fortune’s +Well, Castleton to the left, Portland to the right, and, away +ahead up to the summit of a stupendous climb on to the great +elevated, treeless and parched stony plateau of the Isle, +Reforne. Beyond the prison and the prison quarries, come +Easton, Wakeham, Weston, and Southwell; all stony and +hard-featured and like nothing else but each other. To-day +an exploration of the Isle is easy, for a railway runs <a +name="page226"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 226</span>from +Weymouth along the beach to Chesilton, and another, skirting the +cliffs, takes you out almost to the famous Bill itself; but +otherwise, all the circumstances of the place still fully show +how the Portlanders came to be that oddly different race from the +mainlanders they are shown to be in the pages of <i>The Well +Beloved</i>, and in the writings of innumerable authors.</p> +<p>Portland was to the ancients the Isle of Vindilis, the +“Vindelia” of Richard of Cirencester; and Roman roads +are surviving on it to this day, notwithstanding the blasting and +quarrying activities of this vast bed of building-stone, whence +much of the material for Sir Christopher Wren’s City of +London churches came, and despite the business of fortification +that has abolished many merely antiquarian interests. You, +indeed, cannot get away from stone, here on Portland; physically, +in historic allusions, and in matters of present-day +business. The story of the Isle begins with it, with those +ancient inhabitants, the <i>Baleares</i>, slingers of stones, who +made excellent defence of their unfertile home with the +inexhaustible natural ammunition; and quarrying is now, after the +passing of many centuries, its one industry. It is to be +supposed, without any extravagance of assumption, that the +Portlanders of to-day are the descendants of those ancient +Baleares, and, certainly until quite recent times, they +maintained the aloofness and marked individuality to be expected +from such an ancestry. To them the mainlanders were +foreigners, or, as themselves would say, +“kimberlins”; a flighty, mercurial and none too +scrupulous people, calling themselves Englishmen, who lived on +the adjacent island of Great Britain and <a +name="page227"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 227</span>were only +to be dealt with cautiously, and then solely on matters of +business connected with the selling of stone, or maybe of fish, +caught in Deadman’s Bay. For the true Portlanders, +like their home, are grey and unsmiling, and reflect their +surroundings, even as do those inhabitants of more sheltered and +fertile places; and still, although things be in these later days +of railway communication and a kind of quick-change and +“general-post” all over the country somewhat altered, +a stranger, who by force of circumstances—pleasure is out +of the question—comes to live here, will find himself as +uncongenial as oil is to water.</p> +<p>The outlook of the old Portlanders upon strangers was +justified to them, in a way, when the great prison was built and +the gangs of convicts began to be a feature of the Isle. +<i>They</i>, who thus by force of circumstances over which they +had no control, took up a hard-working and frugal existence upon +the Isle, were specimens of the “kimberlins”; and the +prejudices, if not quite the ignorance, of the islanders saw in +them representative specimens of all +“Outlanders.”</p> +<p>When you come toilsomely uphill from Fortune’s Well, out +upon the stony plateau that is Portland, you presently become +conscious of the contiguity of that great convict establishment, +in the appearance of notice-boards, warning all and sundry of the +penalties awaiting those who aid prisoners to escape. Such +an offence, you learn, “shall be treated as a felony, not +subject to any bail or mainprize” (whatever that may +be). But any “free person” finding money, +letters, or clothing, or anything that may be supposed to have +been left to facilitate <a name="page228"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 228</span>the escape of prisoners shall be +rewarded, unless such person shall be proved to have entered into +collusion, etc., etc., and so forth.</p> +<p>What, however, one especially desires to call attention to is +the delicious expression, “free person.” +Obviously, to the official minds ruling Portland “free +persons” owe their freedom, not to any virtues they +possess, but to their luck in not being found out. One, +being a “free person,” has, therefore, after reading +this notice, an uneasy suspicion that freedom is, in the eye of +those authorities, a wholly undeserved accident, and that if +every one—saving, of course, officials—had their +deserts, they would be cutting and hauling stone out yonder, with +the gangs in those yellow jackets and knickerbockers plentifully +decorated with a pleasing design in broad arrows.</p> +<p>Being merely a “free person,” without prejudice in +one’s favour in the eyes of the armed warders who abound +here, it behoves one to walk circumspectly on Portland.</p> +<p>A great deal might be said of the Convict Prison and its +quarries. It is another “sermon in stones,” +quite as effective as the sermons preached by those other stones +referred to in the lines</p> +<blockquote><p>. . . books in the running brooks,<br /> +Sermons in stones, and good in everything,</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and the text, I take it, is the amended and horribly +sophisticated one: “Thou shalt not steal—or, if you +must, do it outside the cognisance of the criminal +laws!”</p> +<p>But this only in passing. Literary landmarks have +fortunately, no points of contact with burglars, <a +name="page229"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 229</span>fraudulent +trustees, and swindling promoters of companies. We will +make for Pennsylvania Castle, very slightly disguised in <i>The +Well Beloved</i> as “Sylvania Castle,” the residence +of Jocelyn Pierston in that story. Coming to it, past the +cottage of Avice, down that street innocent of vegetation, the +thickets of trees surrounding the Castle (which is not a castle, +but only a castellated mansion built in 1800 by Wyatt, in true +Wyattesque fashion, for the then Governor of the Isle) are seen, +closing in the view. A tree is something more than a tree +on stony, wind-swept Portland. Any tree here is a landmark, +and a grove of trees a feature; and thus, in the thickets and +cliffside undergrowths of “Sylvania Castle,” that +justify the name and <a name="page230"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 230</span>give the lie to any who may in more +than general terms declare Portland to be treeless, the boskage +is therefore more than usually gracious.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image229" href="images/p229.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Bow and Arrow Castle" +title= +"Bow and Arrow Castle" + src="images/p229.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Many incidents in the elfish career of Pierston are made to +happen here. The first Avice was courted by him in the +churchyard down below, where a landslip has swept away the little +church that gave to Church Hope Cove its name, and Avice the +third eloped with another—that Another who with that +capital A lurks between the pages of every novel, and behind the +scenes in most plays—down the steep lane that runs beneath +the archways of “Rufus’,” or Bow and Arrow, +Castle on to the rocks beside the raging sea.</p> +<p>By lengthy cliff-top ways we leave this spot and make for +Portland Bill, whence Anne Garland tearfully watched the topsails +and then the topgallants, and at last the admiral’s flag of +the <i>Victory</i> drop down towards, and into, the watery +distance. Offshore is the Shambles lightship that gave a +refuge to the fleeing Avice and Leverre.</p> +<p>This “wild, herbless, weatherworn promontory,” +called Portland Bill, with its two lighthouses looking down upon +shoals and rapid currents of extraordinary danger to mariners, +obtains its name from the beak-like end of the Isle which +“stretches out like the head of a bird into the English +Channel.” Other, and more fanciful and wonder-loving +accounts would have us believe that it derives from this being +the site of propitiatory Baal fires in far-off pagan times; and, +if we like to carry on the fancy, we may draw comparisons between +the fires of the shivering superstitious terrors of those old +heathens, and the beneficent warning gleams maintained here <a +name="page231"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 231</span>in modern +times by the Trinity House, for the benefit of “they that +go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great +waters.”</p> +<p>Completing the circuit of Portland, the return to +Fortune’s Well and Chesilton is made chiefly along high +ground disclosing a comprehensive and beautiful view of the whole +westward sweep of the Dorset coast, where the many miles of the +Chesil Beach at last lose themselves in hazy distance, and the +heights of Stonebarrow and Golden Cap, between Bridport and Lyme +Regis, pierce the skies.</p> +<h2><a name="page232"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +232</span>CHAPTER XXII</h2> +<p style="text-align: center" class="gutsumm">WEYMOUTH TO +BRIDPORT AND BEAMINSTER</p> +<p><span class="smcap">To</span> leave Weymouth by this route is +to obtain some initial impressions of a very striking character: +impressions, not slight or fleeting, of hilliness and of +Weymouth’s modern growth. A specious and illusory +flat quayside stretch of road, by the well-known swan-haunted +Backwater, ends all too soon, and the road goes at a grievous +inclination up through what was once the village, now the suburb, +and a very packed and populous suburb, too, of East +Chickerell. To this succeeds the Chickerell of the West; +and so, in and out and round about, and up and down—but +chiefly up—at last to Portisham, the first place of any +Hardyean interest.</p> +<p>Portisham, under the bold hills that rise to the commanding +height of Blackdown—locally “Black’on,” +just as the name of the village is shortened to +“Po’sham”—rising eight hundred and +seventeen feet above the sea, is notable to us both from fiction +and in facts. It appears in <i>The Trumpet Major</i> as the +village to which Bob Loveday comes to seek service under Admiral +Hardy, and although the brave but sentimentally flighty Bob be a +character of fiction, the admiral is that very real historical <a +name="page233"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 233</span>personage, +Admiral Sir Thomas Masterman Hardy, Nelson’s friend and +comrade-in-arms, who was born here, in the house still pointed +out, in 1769, and to whose memory the conspicuous monument on +Blackdown is erected. The house is the first on the left, +at the cross-roads as you make for <a name="page234"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 234</span>the village. In the garden +belonging to it, on the opposite side of the road may still be +seen a sundial, bearing the inscription:</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: center"><span +class="smcap">Joseph Hardy</span>, <span +class="smcap">Esq</span>.,<br /> +Kingston Russell. Lat. 50° 45′<br /> +1767<br /> +Fugio fuge.</p> +</blockquote> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image233" href="images/p233.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Portisham" +title= +"Portisham" + src="images/p233.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>It is a lovely perspective along the road approaching +Portisham, disclosing a long avenue of poplars and ashes, with +the village church and some scattered farmsteads in the vale, and +the tremendous sides of the rolling down, covered in patches with +furze, filling in the background. The beautiful old church +has, happily, been left very much to itself, with the +lichen-stains of age and other marks of time not yet scraped +off. A strange epitaph in the churchyard provokes +curiosity:</p> +<blockquote><p>“William Weare lies here in dust,<br /> +As thou and I and all men must.<br /> +Once plundered by Sabean force,<br /> +Some cald it war but others worse.<br /> +With confidence he pleads his cavse,<br /> +And Kings to be above those laws.<br /> +September’s eygth day died hee<br /> +When neare the date of 63<br /> + Anno domini 1670.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Those Sabines appear from the internal evidence of the epitaph +to have been the Roundhead party, and “rebellion,” or +perhaps “robbery,” to have been the worse thing than +war some called it. The allusion is probably to some raid +in which cows and sheep were carried off by the Puritans and were +grudged them by the loyal Weare, who seems, <a +name="page236"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 236</span>in the +passage where he claims “Kings to be above those +laws,” to have cheerfully borne some other foray on the +Royalists’ behalf.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image235" href="images/p235.jpg"> +<img alt= +"The road out of Abbotsbury" +title= +"The road out of Abbotsbury" + src="images/p235.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Two miles from Portisham is the large village of Abbotsbury, +not itself the scene of any of the Wessex romances, but +intrinsically a very interesting place, remarkable for a hilltop +chapel of St. Catherine anciently serving as a seamark, and for +the remains of the Abbey; few, and chiefly worked into farmsteads +and cottages, but including a great stone barn of the fifteenth +century, as long as a cathedral, and very cathedral-like in its +plan.</p> +<p>The great barn of <i>Far from the Madding Crowd</i>, scene of +the sheep-shearing, is really a description of the monastic barn +of Abbotsbury, which, as in the story, resembles a church with +transepts. “It not only emulated the form of the +neighbouring church of the parish, but vied with it in antiquity. +. . . The vast porches at the sides, lofty enough to admit +a waggon laden to its highest with corn in the sheaf, were +spanned by heavy pointed arches of stone, broadly and boldly cut, +whose very simplicity was the origin of a grandeur not apparent +in erections where more ornament has been attempted. The +dusky, filmed chestnut roof, braced and tied in by huge collars, +curves, and diagonals was far nobler in design, because more +wealthy in material, than nine-tenths of those in our modern +churches. Along each side wall was a range of striding +buttresses, throwing deep shadows on the spaces between them, +which were perforated by lancet openings, combining in their +proportions the precise requirements, both of beauty and +ventilation. One could say about this barn, what <a +name="page237"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 237</span>could +hardly be said of either the church or the castle akin to it in +age and style, that the purpose which had dictated its original +erection was the same with that to which it was still +applied.”</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image236" href="images/p236.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Sheep-shearing in Wessex" +title= +"Sheep-shearing in Wessex" + src="images/p236.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Out of Abbotsbury, and down amid the waters of the West Fleet, +is the famous Swannery, where, amid reedy lakes and marshes, some +thousands of swans have from ancient times had a home. Once +belonging to the Church, in the persons of the old abbots of the +Benedictine abbey of Abbotsbury, the swans are now the property +of the Earl of Ilchester, descendant of the “First Countess +of Wessex,” Betty Dornell, whose romance is set forth in +<i>A Group of Noble Dames</i>. Though long passed from the +hands of any religious establishment, the ownership of the swans +still points with the trifling alteration in the position of an +apostrophe, to the fact that “the earth is the Lords’ +and the fulness thereof.”</p> +<p>Eight miles of cliff-top roads, with magnificent views to the +left over sea and coast, and other views equally magnificent +inland, to the right, lead in staggering drops and rises past +Swyre and Puncknowle down to Burton Bradstock, and thence to the +“unheard-of harbour” of West Bay.</p> +<p>West Bay, and Bridport town itself, are scenes in <i>Fellow +Townsmen</i>, where they are called “Port Bredy,” +from the little river, the Brit or Bredy, which here flows into +the sea. West Bay is one of the oddest places on an odd and +original coast. A mile and a half away from Bridport town, +which is content to hide, sheltering away from the sea-breezes, +it has always been about to become great, either as a commercial +harbour or a seaside resort, <a name="page238"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 238</span>or both, but has ended in not +achieving greatness of any kind. No one who enjoys the +sight of a quiet and picturesque place will sorrow at that.</p> +<p>Picturesque it is in a wholly accidental and unstudied +way. It owns a little harbour, with quays and an inn or +two, and shipping that, daring greatly, has to be warped in +between the narrow timbered pier-heads, where a furious sea is +for ever banging in from the unsheltered bay; and away at one +side it is shut in from the outside coast by some saucy-looking +cliffs of golden yellow sandstone, whose odd effect is due to +their being the remaining part of a symmetrically rounded +down. The seaward part has been shorn off, with the odd +result that the rest looks like the quarter of some gigantic +Dutch cheese of pantomime. It is an eloquent, stimulating, +not unpleasing loneliness that characterises the shore of West +Bay. A few old thatched houses, halting midway between an +inland and a coastwise picturesqueness, and so only succeeding in +being broken-heartedly nondescript, start out of wastes of tiny +shingle, and are backed at a discreet distance by a long row of +modern houses, whose architect is so often on their account +professionally spoken of as a genius, that it becomes a duty to +state, however convenient to the residents in them their plan may +be, that their appearance in the view is the one pictorial +drawback to West Bay.</p> +<p>The microscopic shingle—for shingle it is—of West +Bay has for centuries been the enemy of the place and has +practically strangled it. There are heaped up wastes of it +everywhere, and every visitor involuntarily carries some of it +away, as a sample, <a name="page240"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +240</span>about his person, in his shoes or his hair, or in his +pockets. The more of it removed in this, or indeed in any +other manner, the better pleased will West Bay be, for it comes, +unasked, into the houses; you have it for breakfast, lunch, tea, +and supper, as an unsolicited garnish to the viands, and when at +last you seek repose between the sheets, there it is again. +These wastes are part of that natural phenomenon of the Dorset +coast, the Chesil Beach, which runs eighteen miles from this +point along the perfectly unbroken shores of the Bay to Chesilton +and Portland. The “Chesil” is just the +“Pebble” beach: that old word for pebbles being found +elsewhere in Dorsetshire, and at Chislehurst, among other +places. A pecularity of it is that by insensible degrees it +grows coarser as it proceeds in a south-easterly direction, +ending as very large pebbles at Portland. The fishermen of +this lonely coast, landing on dark nights, with nothing else to +guide them as to their whereabouts, can always readily settle the +point by handling this shingle, and by use can tell within a mile +of the particular spot.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image239" href="images/p239.jpg"> +<img alt= +"West Bay, Bridport" +title= +"West Bay, Bridport" + src="images/p239.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>The story of West Bay’s struggle against this insidious +enemy is an old one. In 1722 the Bridport authorities +procured an Act of Parliament empowering them to restore and +rebuild the haven and port, the piers and landing-places, in +order to bring the town to that ancient and flourishing state +whence it had declined. The preamble stated that by reason +of a great sickness and other accidents, the wealthy inhabitants +had been swept away and the haven choked. But although the +Legislature had given authority for the work to be done, it did +not indicate <a name="page241"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +241</span>whence the funds were to be obtained, and so it was not +until 1742 that the pier, authorised twenty years before, was +built, nor was it until another fourteen years had waned that the +pier and harbour were enlarged. Mr. Hardy in <i>Fellow +Townsmen</i> thus describes West Bay: “A gap appeared in +the rampart of hills which shut out the sea, and on the left of +the opening rose a vertical cliff, coloured a burning orange by +the sunlight, the companion cliff on the right side being livid +in shade. Between these cliffs, like the Libyan Bay which +sheltered the shipwrecked Trojans, was a little haven, seemingly +a beginning made by Nature herself of a perfect harbour, which +appealed to the passer-by as only requiring a little human +industry to finish it and make it famous, the ground on each +side, as far back as the daisied slopes that bounded the interior +valley, being a mere layer of blown sand. But the +Port-Bredy burgesses a mile inland had, in the course of ten +centuries, responded many times to that mute appeal, with the +result that the tides had invariably choked up their works with +sand and shingle as soon as completed. There were but few +houses here: a rough pier, a few boats, some stores, an inn, a +residence or two, a ketch unloading in the harbour, were the +chief features of the settlement.”</p> +<p>The harbour road, along whose mile and a half, the +domestically unhappy Barnet went to see his Lucy at various +intervals of time, leads into the corporate town of Bridport, +which, after long remaining, as far as the casual eye of the +stranger may perceive, little affected by the circumstance of +being on a railway, is now developing a something in the nature +of a suburb, greatly to the dismay of <a name="page242"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 242</span>neighbouring residents who, residing +here because of its isolation on a branch railway that brings few +passengers, and to landward of a harbour that has no commerce, +now can glimpse at the end of a vista of years some prospect of +the ancient peace of Bridport being genteelly disturbed.</p> +<p>Bridport was, in those days when it remained a busy place, a +town keenly interested in the flax, hemp, twine, and rope +industries; and rope and twine walks, where the old methods are +even yet in use, are still features of its less prominent lanes +and alleys, but the unobservant and the incurious, who to be sure +form the majority of travellers, might pass, and do pass, through +Bridport, without thinking it any other than a quiet market town, +dependent solely upon surrounding agricultural needs and weekly +village shopping.</p> +<p>When hemp was grown in the neighbourhood of Bridport, in those +bustling days when the manufacturers of the town supplied the +King’s Navy with ropes, and criminals were suspended by +this staple article of the town, the expression “stabbed +with a Bridport dagger,” was a pretty, or at least a +symbolical, way of saying that a man had been hanged. It +was a figure of speech that quite escaped that matter-of-fact +antiquary, Leland, when in the time of Henry VIII. he came to +Bridport and stolidly noted down: “At Bridport be made good +daggers.”</p> +<p>One is disposed to sympathise with Leland in that egregious +error of his, for which he and his memory have been laughed at +for more than three hundred and fifty years. How his shade +must writhe at the shame of it! He was, doubtless, tired <a +name="page243"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 243</span>and bored, +for some reason or another, when he reached Bridport, and to his +undoing, took things on trust. And nowadays, every one who +writes the very leastest scrap on Bridport has his fling at the +poor old fellow; and I—conscience tells +me—insincerely do the same, under a miserably inadequate +cloak of pretended sympathy!</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image243" href="images/p243.jpg"> +<img alt= +"High Street and Town Hall, Bridport" +title= +"High Street and Town Hall, Bridport" + src="images/p243.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Barnet, whose baulked love is the theme of <i>Fellow +Townsmen</i>, was descended from the hemp and rope-merchants of +Bridport, as the story, in several allusions, tells us.</p> +<p>South Street, leading from the Harbour Road into the right and +left course of the main street, contains most of the very few +buildings of any great age. Among them is the little +Gothic, gabled building now a workmen’s club, but once the +“Castle” inn. Here, too, is the church, ancient +enough, but restored <a name="page244"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 244</span>in 1860, when the two bays were +added to the nave; probably the incident referred to by Mr. +Hardy: “The church had had such a tremendous practical joke +played upon it by some facetious restorer or other as to be +scarce recognisable by its dearest old friends.”</p> +<p>There is, in this otherwise rather bald interior of Bridport +church, a curious mural tablet to the “Memory of Edward +Coker, Gent. Second son of Capt. Robert Coker of Mapowder, +Slayne at the Bull Inn, in Bridpur<sup>t</sup>. June the +14<sup>th</sup> Añ. Dõ. 1685, by one Venner, who +was a Officer unde<sup>r</sup> the late Dvke of +Mvnmovt<sup>h</sup> in that Rebellion.”</p> +<p>The Bull inn stands yet in the main street, but +modernised. It is the original of the “Black +Bull” in <i>Fellow Townsmen</i>.</p> +<p>Six miles due north of Bridport lies the little town of +Beaminster, the “hill-surrounded little town” of +which Angel Clare’s father was vicar. “Sweet +Be’mi’ster” says Barnes:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Sweet Be’mi’ster, that bist +abound<br /> +By green and woody hills all round,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and in truth those hills that surround it are set about this +quiet agricultural town in a manner that fairly astounds the +traveller. No railway reaches “Emminster,” as +it is named in <i>Tess of the D’Urbervilles</i>, and, +looking upon those mighty natural turrets and domes that beset +it, the traveller is of opinion that no railway ever will. +Nearing Beaminster at cockshut time, when the birds have all gone +to bed, when the sky is hot in the west with the burnished copper +of the after-glow, and a <a name="page245"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 245</span>cold blue and green, with pale stars +appearing, fills the eastern firmament, the scenery is something +awesome and approaching an Alpine sublimity. Then the +twilight streets of this quiet place in the basin-like hollow +begin to take an hospitable look, and the tall red stone tower of +the church, that looks so nobly aloof in day, assumes a welcoming +paternal benignancy. It is a toilsome winning to +Beaminster, but, when won, worth the trouble of it.</p> +<h2><a name="page246"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +246</span>CHAPTER XXIII</h2> +<p style="text-align: center" class="gutsumm">WEYMOUTH TO +LULWORTH COVE</p> +<p><span class="smcap">You</span> cannot go far from Weymouth +without a good deal of hill-climbing, but the longest stretch of +level in this district, where levels are the exception and hills +the rule, is by this route. It is not so very long, even +then, for when you have passed the curving Esplanade and Lodmoor +Marsh, and come to the foot of Jordan Hill, thought to have been +the site of the Roman “Clavinium,” it is only two and +a half miles. Preston stands on the top of a further hill, +and is a place of great resort for brake-parties not greatly +interested in literature. Turning to the left out of its +street, opposite the Ship inn, we come to the pretty +village—or hamlet, for no church is visible—of Sutton +Poyntz, the “Overcombe” of <i>The Trumpet +Major</i>. Its thatched stone cottages, charming +tree-shaded stream and mill-pond, and old barns, all under the +looming shadow of the downs, vividly recall the old-fashioned +ways and talk, and the pleasant romance of Mr. Hardy’s only +semi-historical novel; and you need not see, if you do not wish, +the flagrant Vandalism of the Weymouth waterworks, hard by, and +can if you will, turn your back upon the inn that will be +interesting and <a name="page247"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +247</span>picturesque some day, but now, rawly new, is an outrage +upon, and a thing altogether out of key with, these old rustic +surroundings.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image247" href="images/p247.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Sutton Poyntz: The “Overcombe” of “The Trumpet +Major”" +title= +"Sutton Poyntz: The “Overcombe” of “The Trumpet +Major”" + src="images/p247.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Squawking ducks, hurrying across the dusty road and flouncing +noisily into the clearly running stream, rooks cawing contentedly +from their windy see-saw in the topmost branches of tall trees; +and tired horses coming stolidly home from plough are the chief +features of this “Overcombe,” where John Loveday had +his mill, and his sons John and Bob, and Anne Garland and +Matilda, and all the lovable, the hateful, or the merely +contemptible characters in that sympathetic tale came and +went. The mill—I am afraid it is not <i>the</i> mill, +but one of somewhat later date—still grinds corn, and you +can see it, bulking <a name="page248"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 248</span>very largely between the trees, +“the smooth millpond, over-full, and intruding into the +hedge and into the road,” as mill-ponds will do, even in +these later days of strict local government. But the days +of European wars are gone. It is a hundred years since the +last call of brave, tender, loyal John Loveday, the Trumpet +Major, was silenced on a bloody battlefield in Spain, and well on +toward the same tale of years since the press gangs, fellows to +that which searched Overcombe Mill for Bob Loveday, impressed +likely fellows for service on His Majesty’s +ships:—the characters of <i>The Trumpet Major</i> belong +wholly to a bygone age.</p> +<p>To the same age belonged the characters in <i>The Melancholy +Hussar of the German Legion</i>, a short story associated with +Bincombe, a tiny village it requires no little exertion to reach; +but you may win this way to it as easily—or at any rate, +not more laboriously—than by any other route. It +stands up among the downs, and in what Dorset folk would call an +“outspan”—that is to say a remote hollow, +recess or shelf amid them, where their sides are so steep that +they give the appearance of some theatrical +“back-cloth” to a romantic scene.</p> +<p>“Here stretch the downs, high and breezy and green, +absolutely unchanged since those eventful days. A plough +has never disturbed the turf, and the sod that was uppermost then +is uppermost now. Here stood the camp; here are distinct +traces of the banks thrown up for the horses of the cavalry, and +spots where the midden heaps lay are still to be observed. +At night, when I walk across the lonely place, it is impossible +to avoid <a name="page249"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +249</span>hearing, amid the scourings of the wind over the +grass-bents and thistles, the old trumpet and bugle-calls, the +rattle of the halters; to help seeing rows of spectral tents and +the <i>impedimenta</i> of the soldiery. From within the +canvases come guttural syllables of foreign tongues, and broken +songs of the fatherland; for they were mainly regiments of the +King’s German Legion that slept round the tent-poles +hereabout at that time.”</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image249" href="images/p249.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Bincombe" +title= +"Bincombe" + src="images/p249.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>The story associated with this out-of-the-way place <a +name="page250"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 250</span>is one in +its chief lines true to facts, for in an unmarked grave within +the little churchyard, lie two young German soldiers, shot for +desertion from the York Hussars, as quoted at the end of the +story from the register:</p> +<p>“Matth: Tina (Corpl.) in His Majesty’s Regiment of +York Hussars, and shot for Desertion, was Buried June 30th, 1801, +aged 22 years. Born in the town of Sarrbruk, +Germany.”</p> +<p>“Christop Bless, belonging to His Majesty’s +Regiment of York Hussars, who was shot for Desertion, was Buried +June 30th, 1801, aged 22 years. Born at Lothaargen, +Alsatia.”</p> +<p>Returning from Bincombe and down again through Sutton Poyntz +to Preston, we come to Osmington, with views down along on the +right to Ringstead Bay; but, avoiding for the present the coast, +strike inland, to Poxwell, the “Oxwell Hall” of +<i>The Trumpet Major</i>. It is really three miles from +“Overcombe,” and therefore not the close neighbour to +the Lovedays it is made to be, for the purposes of the +novel. The church stands beside of the road, the old +manor-house, now a farmstead, the home of “Uncle +Benjy,” miserly Squire Derriman, close by. In old +days, back in 1634, when it was built, this curiously walled-in +residence with its outer porter’s lodge, the physical and +visible sign of an ever-present distrust of strangers, was a seat +of the Henning family. That lodge still stands, obsolete as +an <i>avant-garde</i> and gazebo for the timely spying out of +unwelcome visitors, but very admirable for a summer-house, if the +farmer had leisure for such things. But as he has not, but +must continually “plough and sow, and reap and <a +name="page251"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 251</span>mow,” +or see that others do so, the lodge is in every way a +derelict. The farmer could perhaps add some testimony of +his own respecting all those “romantic excellencies and +practical drawbacks,” mentioned in the story, and existing +in fact; but, farmers having a bent towards practicality, +although they discuss, rather than practise it, it is to be +supposed that he would place a stress upon the drawbacks, to the +neglect of the romance.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image251" href="images/p251.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Poxwell Manor" +title= +"Poxwell Manor" + src="images/p251.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Pursuing the road onwards from Poxwell, we come, in a mile and +a half, to the cross-roads at “Warm’ell Cross,” +<a name="page252"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 252</span>leading +on the left to Dorchester, on the right to Wareham, and straight +ahead across the remotenesses of “Egdon Heath,” to +Moreton station. Here we turn to the right, and so miss the +village of Warmwell, whence the cross roads take their +name. It is not by any means, to the ordinary traveller, a +remarkable crossing of the roads, but it has associations for the +pilgrim stored with the literary lore of the Hardy Country, for +it was here, in the story of <i>The Distracted Preacher</i>, that +Mr. Stockdale, the Wesleyan minister of Nether Mynton, by the aid +of their voices, crying “Hoi—hoi—hoi! +Help, help!” discovered Will Latimer and the exciseman tied +to the trees by the smuggler friends of his Lizzie. Turning +here to the right, Owermoigne itself—the “Nether +Mynton” of that tale of smuggled spirits and religious +scruples—is reached in another mile; the church and its +tiny village of thatched rusticity standing shyly, as such a +smuggler’s haunt should do, off the broad high road and +down a little stumbly and rutty lane. The body of the +church has been rebuilt since Lizzie Newberry and her friends +stored “the stuff” in the tower and the churchyard, +but that churchyard remains the same, as also does the tower from +whose battlements the “free traders” spied upon the +excisemen, searching for those hidden tubs.</p> +<p>From this road there is a better distant view of the great +equestrian effigy of George III., cut in the chalky southern +slopes of the downs, than from any other point. He looks +impressive, in the ghostly sort, seen across the bare slopes, +where perhaps an occasional farmstead or barton, or a row of +wheat-ricks, accentuates the solitude and at <a +name="page253"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 253</span>the same +time gives scale to the chalky effigies of His Majesty and that +very elegant horse of his, showing how very large this horse and +rider really are. The gallant Trumpet Major told about the +making of this memorial, as he and Anne Garland walked among the +flowering peas, and described what this “huge picture of +the king on horseback in the earth of the hill” was to be +like: “The King’s head is to be as big as our +mill-pond, and his body as big as this garden; he and the horse +will cover more than an acre.”</p> +<p>And here he is to this day, very spirited and martial, with +his cocked hat and marshal’s baton.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image253" href="images/p253.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Owermoigne: The Smugglers’ Haunt in “The Distracted +Preacher”" +title= +"Owermoigne: The Smugglers’ Haunt in “The Distracted +Preacher”" + src="images/p253.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>It is, however, a weariful business to arrive in the +neighbourhood of him, for those chalk downs are just as +inhospitable in the sun as they are in the storms of winter, the +only difference lying between being fried on their shelterless +sides when the thermometer registers ninety degrees, or frozen +when the mercury sinks towards zero.</p> +<p><a name="page254"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 254</span>Some +two miles of highway along the verge of Egdon Heath bring us to a +right-hand turning, leading past Winfrith Newburgh by a somewhat +more shaded route up over the crest of these chalky ranges, and +then with several turnings, steeply down, and at length, +“by and large”—as sailors say—to the +village of West Lulworth, which lies at the inland end of a +coombe, the better part of a mile from Lulworth Cove.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image254" href="images/p254.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Lulworth Cove" +title= +"Lulworth Cove" + src="images/p254.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>To Lulworth—or as he terms it, Lullstead—Cove, Mr. +Hardy returns again and again. It is the “small basin +of sea enclosed by the cliffs” where Troy bathed and was +supposed to have been drowned; it is one of the spots where +<i>The Distracted Preacher’s</i> parishioners landed their +smuggled spirit-tubs, and <a name="page255"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 255</span>upon its milk-white shores of +limestone pebbles the lifeless bodies of Stephen Hardcombe and +his companion were found. It was the first meeting-place of +Cytherea Graye and Edward Springrove; and was, again, that +“three-quarter round Cove” where, “screened +from every mortal eye,” save his own, Solomon Selby +observed Bonaparte questing along the darkling shore for a +suitable place where his flotilla might land in his projected +invasion of England.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image255" href="images/p255.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Lulworth Cove. The coastgard station" +title= +"Lulworth Cove. The coastgard station" + src="images/p255.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Lulworth Cove is an almost perfect circle, eaten out of the +limestone in the long ago by the sea, in an unusually geometrical +manner. Bindon Hill frowns down upon it, and in summer the +circle of light-blue water laughs saucily back, in little +sparkling ripples, just as though there were no storms in nature +and no cruel rock-bound coast <a name="page256"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 256</span>outside. The Cove is, if you +be classically minded, a Bath of the Naiads; and, if less +imaginative, is at any rate a delightful spot that even in these +tidied-up and ordered days, when every little seaside cove has +its hair brushed and face scrubbed, and is made always to look +its Sunday best, persists in being littered with a longshore +fishing and boating medley of anchors and lobster-pots, ropes, +chains and windlasses, infinitely more pleasing to right-thinking +persons—by whom I indicate those who think with +myself—than the neatest of promenades and seats. +True, they have rebuilt or enlarged the Cove Hotel and red-brick +manifestations of a growing favour with visitors are springing up +beside the old thatched cottages; but Lulworth—Cove or +village—is not spoiled yet. The Coastguard Station, +perched on what looks like a hazardous pinnacle of cliff, with +the wild chasm of Stair Hole to one side of it and the sheer drop +into the Cove on the other, is the most striking feature, looking +down from landward, of this curious place, which has not its +fellow anywhere else, and is the sunniest, the ruggedest, and +certainly the most treeless place along the Dorset coast.</p> +<p>To those who have persevered along the roads into Lulworth, +the prospect of again climbing those hills is perhaps a little +grim, and they should so contrive to time their arrival and +departure that they comfortably fit in with the return to +Weymouth of the excursion steamer plying in the tourist season +between the two places.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image256" href="images/p256a.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Lytchett Heath" +title= +"Lytchett Heath" + src="images/p256a.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p256b.jpg"> +<img alt= +"The Equestrian Effigy of George III" +title= +"The Equestrian Effigy of George III" + src="images/p256b.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p256c.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Entrance to Charborough Park" +title= +"Entrance to Charborough Park" + src="images/p256c.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<h2><a name="page257"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +257</span>CHAPTER XXIV</h2> +<p style="text-align: center" class="gutsumm">BOURNEMOUTH TO +POOLE</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Bournemouth</span>, the +“Sandbourne” of <i>Tess of the +D’Urbervilles</i> and of minor incidents and passing +allusions in others of Mr. Hardy’s novels, is one of the +principal gates of entrance to his Wessex. Just within the +western borders of Hampshire, or what he would call “Upper +Wessex,” the heart of his literary country is within the +easiest reach of its pleasant districts of villa residences, by +road or rail, or indeed by sea; for Swanage, the +“Swanwich” of a Hardy gazetteer, and Lulworth Cove, +his “Lullstead,” that azure pool within “the +two projecting spurs of rock which form the pillars of Hercules +to this miniature Mediterranean,” are the destinations in +summer of many steamboat voyages.</p> +<p>“Sandbourne has become a large place, they +say.” Thus Angel Clare, seeking his wife somewhere +within its bounds. Large indeed, and growing yet. +Census officials and other statisticians toil after its increase +in vain. I find a guide-book of 1887 speaking of its +population as “nearly 18,000.” I find another, +of 1896, putting it at “about 40,000,” and then +referring to the last census returns, discover it to have further +risen to forty-seven <a name="page258"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 258</span>thousand souls, and a few +over. By now it doubtless numbers full fifty thousand, and +has further rubricated and underscored its description in the +last pages of Tess: “This fashionable watering-place with +its eastern and its western stations, its piers, its groves of +pines, its promenades, and its covered gardens, was to Angel +Clare like a fairy place, suddenly created by the stroke of a +wand, and allowed to get a little dusty. An outlying +eastern tract of the enormous Egdon waste was close at hand, yet +on the very verge of that tawny piece of antiquity such a +glittering novelty as this pleasure city had chosen to spring +up. Within the space of a mile from its outskirts every +irregularity of the soil was prehistoric, every channel an +undisturbed British trackway; not a sod having been turned there +since the days of the Cæsars. Yet the exotic had +grown here, suddenly as the prophet’s gourd; and had drawn +hither Tess.”</p> +<p>“By the midnight lamps he went up and down the winding +ways of this new world in an old one, and could discern between +the trees and against the stars the lofty roofs, chimneys, +gazebos, and towers of the numerous fanciful residences of which +the place was composed. It was a city of detached mansions; +a Mediterranean lounging-place on the English Channel; and as +seen now by night it seemed even more imposing than it was.</p> +<p>“The sea was near at hand, but not intrusive; it +murmured, and he thought it was the pines, the pines murmured in +precisely the same tones, and he thought they were the +sea.”</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image258" href="images/p258.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Bournemouth: The Invalid’s Walk" +title= +"Bournemouth: The Invalid’s Walk" + src="images/p258.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>This rich and populous seaside home of wealthy valetudinarians +was until well on into the nineteenth <a name="page259"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 259</span>century a lonely waste, whose only +frequenters were smugglers, fishermen, rabbits, and +seagulls. In the midst of its pine-woods, sands, and +heather a little stream, the Bourne, which now gives this great +concourse of villa paradises, palatial hotels, and fashionable +shops its name, flowed into the sea, just where, in these days, +tricked out with cascades, and fountains, and made to wander +circuitously at the will of landscape-gardeners amid the neatest +of lawns and the gayest of flower-beds, it at last trickles +exhaustedly into the sea, under the pier. Its natural +course from the neighbourhood of Kinson, down Bourne Bottom, to +that smallest of “mouths,” is some six miles, but in +these days it is made to work hard in the last stretch, through +the public gardens, and where it once covered one mile, is now +looped here and turned back there upon itself, and exploited +generally, until it has become as sophisticated a stream as +anywhere to be found. The Bourne is, indeed, like the +humble parent of some overwhelming social success, made to alter +its ways and put aside its rustic manners, to do credit to its +offspring.</p> +<p>The country folk who live in the background of this oft-styled +“City of Pines,” still call it merely +“Bourne,” as it was when, many years ago, Dr. +Granville made the fortunes of the hamlet, frequented by a few +invalids and others rejoicing in the spicy odours of the +pine-woods, that had grown in a scattered and chance fashion upon +the heath. “No situation,” said that authority +upon spas and watering-places, “possesses so many +capabilities of being made the very first sea watering-place in +England; and not only a watering-place, but what is still more <a +name="page260"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 260</span>important, +a winter residence for the most delicate constitutions requiring +a warm and sheltered locality at this season of the +year.” Then follow comparisons favourable to the site +of Bournemouth, and derogatory to other seaside resorts.</p> +<p>Every circumstance insured attention being drawn to this +weighty pronouncement, and advantage being taken of it. +Consumptives came and found the air beneficial, and Bournemouth +grew suddenly and astonishingly upon a lonely coastline; arising +in that residential all-round-the-calendar character it has kept +to this day, in spite of those holiday-folk, the excursionists +and trippers whom its “residential” stratum +discourages as much as possible. But when even so +thoroughly exclusive a residential health-resort has been so +successful, and has grown so greatly in that character as +Bournemouth has grown, there comes inevitably a time when the +workers and tradesfolk, ministrants to the wants of those +residents, themselves become an important section of the +community. It is a time when suburbs and quarters, +invidiously distinguished from one another in the social scale, +have established themselves; when, in short, from being just the +resort of a class, a place becomes a microcosm of life, in which +all classes and degrees are represented. The seal was set +upon the arrival of that time for Bournemouth with its admission +to the dignity of a municipal borough, fully equipped with Mayor +and Town Council, in the summer of 1890, and again, later, with +the opening of electric tramways. Railway-companies urge +the attractions of Bournemouth upon holiday-makers, with great +success, and nowadays one only perceives the <a +name="page261"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 261</span>place in +anything like its former characteristic air at such time when the +summer has gone and the holiday-maker has returned to his own +fireside.</p> +<p>Bournemouth has already gathered together some odds and ends +of sentimental associations. Mary Wollstonecraft, widow of +Shelley, died here in 1853, and lies in the churchyard of St. +Peter’s, beside Godwin and his wife, whose bodies were +brought from the London churchyard of St. Pancras. Keble +died here in 1866, and the present St. Peter’s is his +memorial. Robert Louis Stevenson, Bournemouth’s most +distinguished consumptive, resided at “Skerryvore,” +in Alum Chine Road, before he took flight to the South Seas.</p> +<p>But—singular and ungrateful omission—one looks in +vain for a statue to Dr. Granville, who, by his powerful +advocacy, made Bournemouth, just as Dr. Russel made Brighton a +century earlier. In this it is not difficult to find +another instance of “benefits forgot.”</p> +<p>The juxtaposition of a place so new as Bournemouth with one so +ancient as Poole is a piquant circumstance. When +Bournemouth rose, not like Britannia, from the azure main, but +from beside it, there was a considerable interval of open country +between the hoary seaport and the mint-new pleasure-town. +That interval has now shrunk to vanishing-point; for, what with +Bournemouth’s expansion, growing Parkstone’s position +midway, and Poole’s own attempt to sprout in an eastwardly +direction, to meet those manifestations, the green country has +been abolished beneath an irruption of bricks and mortar.</p> +<p>The piquancy of Poole’s ancient repose being <a +name="page262"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 262</span>neighboured +by Bournemouth’s wide-awake life is italicised when that +port—the “Havenpool” of <i>To Please his +Wife</i>—is entered. It would not be correct to say +that the days of Poole as a port are over, but with the growth in +size of modern ships, the shallowness of Poole Harbour in whose +recesses it is tucked rather obscurely away, prevents any but +vessels of slight draught coming up to its quays. For that +reason, large ocean-going steamers are strangers to Poole, more +familiar with wooden barques and brigantines and their maze of +masts and spars, than with the capacious steamships that, +although of much greater speed and tonnage, carry very slight and +insignificant sticks; and were it not for the china-clay +shipments and for that coasting trade which seems almost +indestructible, Poole would assuredly die.</p> +<p>But Poole, besides being ancient, has been a place to reckon +with. Already, in 1220, when by a proclamation of Henry +III. the ships of many ports were sealed up, Poole appeared among +the number. In 1347 its contribution towards the siege of +Calais was four ships and ninety-four men, and it was the base +from which the English army in France was provisioned. Then +in 1349 came that fourteenth century scourge, the Black Death, +and Poole, among other towns, was almost depopulated, and lost +the Parliamentary representation it had long enjoyed. But +it made a good recovery, and in the time of Henry VI. regained +its Parliamentary representation. Leland, writing of the +place describes it, two hundred years later, as “a poore +fisshar village, much encreasid with fair building and use of +marchaundise of old tyme.” Poole, after that <a +name="page263"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 263</span>description +was penned, continued to recover itself, and fully regained its +lost prosperity. Fifty years later it is found carrying on +a thriving trade with Spain, and how truly it was said that its +merchants were men of wealth and consideration may be judged from +their large, and architecturally and decoratively fine, mansions +still remaining, although nowadays put to all kinds of mean uses +and often occupied as tenements.</p> +<p>Poole, however, long enjoyed a very bad reputation, and the +wealth of which these were some of the evidences, was not often +come by in very reputable ways. When it is said that Poole +“enjoyed” a bad reputation, it is said advisedly, for +Poole was so lost to shame that it really <i>did</i> enjoy what +should have been a source of some searchings of heart. It +was a veritable nest of pirates and smugglers, and the home of +strange and original sinfulnesses; so that at last an injurious +rhyme that still survives was circulated about it:</p> +<blockquote><p>“If Poole were a fish-pool, and the men of +Poole fish,<br /> +There’d be a pool for the devil, and fish for his +dish.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>So early as the close of the fourteenth century, the +buccaneers of Poole were infamous, and at their head was the +notorious Harry Page, known to the French and the Spaniards as +Arripay, the nearest they could frame to pronounce his +name. Arripay was a very full-blooded, enterprising, and +unscrupulous fellow; if without irreverence we may call him a +“fellow,” who was the admiral of his rascally +profession. There can be little doubt but that tradition +has added not a little to the tales of his exploits, and it is +hardly credible that he and his fellow-pirates should, on one <a +name="page264"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 264</span>occasion, +have brought home a hundred and twenty prizes from the coast of +Brittany. His forays were made upon the shipping of the +foreigner, and with such system that no ship, it was said, could +successfully run the gauntlet of his lawless flotilla. His +success and power were so great that they necessitated the +sending of an expedition to sweep the seas of him. This was +an allied French and Spanish force, commissioned in 1406, and +sailing under the command of Perdo Nino, Count of Buelna. +Adopting the tactics of raiders, they burnt and ravaged the +coasts of Cornwall and Devon, and, coming to Dorset, swept into +Arripay’s hornets’ nest of Poole Harbour, and landing +at Poole itself, defeated the townsmen in a pitched battle. +The brother of the redoubtable Arripay was among the slain.</p> +<p>A worthy successor of this bold spirit in the pike and cutlass +way—although he was no pirate, but just an honest stalwart +sailor—was that bonny fighter, Peter Jolliffe, of the hoy +<i>Sea Adventurer</i>. Off Swanage in 1694, he fell in with +a French privateer having a poor little captured Weymouth +fishing-smack in tow, and attacked the Frenchman repeatedly, and +at last with such success, that he not only released the smack, +but drove the privateer ashore near Lulworth, its crew being made +prisoners of war. For so signal an instance of bravery +Jolliffe received a gold chain and medal from the hands of the +king himself.</p> +<p>Jolliffe’s example fired enthusiasm, and the following +year, William Thompson, skipper of a fishing-smack, aided only by +his scanty crew of one man and a boy, attacked a Cherbourg +privateer that had attempted to capture him, and actually +succeeded in capturing it and its complement of sixteen hands, <a +name="page265"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +265</span>instead. He brought his prize into Poole, and he +too, fully deserved that gold chain and medal awarded him.</p> +<p>In St. James’s church itself—disclosing an +interior not unlike that of a stern cabin of an old +man-o’-war, writ large—is a monument to the intrepid +Jolliffe. From a reminiscence of it, no doubt, Mr. Hardy +chose to name Captain Shadrach Jolliffe, that shipmaster engaged +in the Newfoundland trade who is the ill-fated hero of <i>To +Please his Wife</i>.</p> +<p>For the rest, Poole figures so largely in the Civil War, as a +town ardently in favour of the Parliament, that it has a long and +stirring story of its own, in the varying fortunes of Roundheads +and Stuarts. It is too lengthy a story to be told with +advantage here.</p> +<p>The High Street of Poole, a mile long, is busy enough to quite +dispel any idea that Poole is not prospering; but, on the other +hand, the many puzzling narrow streets that lead out of it are so +rich in what have been noble residences, that they tell in +unmistakable tones of a greater period than this of to-day.</p> +<p>These byways lead at last past the church of St. Paul, the +fellow to St. James’s, with its dolphin vane, to Poole +Quay, where the most prominent feature is an ancient Gothic +building, looking very like some desecrated place of worship, or +a monastic tithe-barn. It is, as a matter of fact, neither, +but the “Town Cellar,” a relic of a past age when +Poole was part of the manor of Canford. The lords of +Canford, away back to that ubiquitous John o’ Gaunt, +“time-honoured Lancaster,” who seems to have owned +quite half of the most desirable <a name="page266"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 266</span>properties in the England of his +time, took toll in money, when they could, and in kind when +silver marks and golden angels were scarce; and in the +“Town Cellar” were stored those bales of wool, those +spices from Ind, and those miscellaneous goods, which were made +in this manner to render unto the Cæsars of Canford, in +times when such things were. It is a picturesque old +building, its walls oddly composed of flint intermingled with +large squared pieces of stone that, by the look of them, would +seem to have been plundered from some older structure.</p> +<p>Opposite stands the Harbour Office, not altogether +unpicturesquely provided with a loggia supported by columns, and +still retaining the sundial erected when clocks were +scarce. The Mayor of Poole, who in 1727 presided over the +fortunes of the port, is handed down to posterity by the quaint +tablet let into the gable wall, showing us the quarter-length +relief portrait of a stout personage in voluminous wig and +mayoral chain and robes, lackadaisically glancing skyward, as +though longing to be gone to those ethereal regions where double +chins and “too, too solid flesh” are not.</p> +<p>Poole Quay—its old buildings, waterside picturesqueness, +and the shipping lying off the walls—is an interesting +place for the artist, who has it very much to himself; for the +holiday-maker does not often discover it. But waterside +characters are not lacking: sailors, who have got berths and are +only waiting for the tide to serve; other sailors, who are in +want of berths; town boys, who would dearly like to go to sea; +and nondescript characters, who would not take a job if offered +to them, and want nothing but a quayside bollard to sit upon, +sunshine, a pipe of <a name="page268"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 268</span>tobacco, and the price of half a +pint: these form the natural history of Poole Quay, which though +it may have been—and was—one of the gateways into the +great outer world, in the brave old days of Arripay and his merry +men, is now something of a straitened gate, and Poole itself for +the land voyager very much in the nature of one of those +stop-blocks at the end of a railway siding: what a railway man +would call a “dead end.”</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image267" href="images/p267.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Poole Quay" +title= +"Poole Quay" + src="images/p267.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>For Poole is not a main road to anywhere, and when you have +turned down into it, on those three and a half miles from +Bournemouth, you are either compelled to return the way you came, +or else cross a creek by the toll-bridge to Hamworthy, where +there is nothing but a church built in 1826—and precisely +of the nature one might expect from that date—and, a little +way onward, a lonely railway junction in midst of sandy heaths +and whispering pines, which, even at night, “tell the tale +of their species,” as phrenologists say, “without +help from outline or colour,” in “those melancholy +moans and sobs which give to their sound a solemn sadness +surpassing even that of the sea.” It is the district +of <i>The Hand of Ethelberta</i>, and if we pursue it, we shall, +as Sol says, in that novel, “come to no place for two or +three miles, and then only to Flychett,” which, in everyday +life, is Lytchett Minster, a place which, despite that grand +name, can show nothing in the nature of a cathedral, and is, as +Sol said, “a trumpery small bit of a village,” where +possibly that wheelwright mentioned in the story still +“keeps a beer-house and owns two horses.” That +house is the inn oddly named the “Peter’s +Finger,” with a picture-sign standing on a post by the +wayside, and <a name="page269"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +269</span>showing St. Peter holding up a hand with two extended +fingers in benedictory fashion, as though blessing the +wayfarer. The origin of this sign is said to be the custom, +once usual in Roman Catholic times, of holding manorial courts on +Lammas Day, the 1st of August, the day of St. Peter ad +Vincula—that St. Peter-in-the-Fetters to whom the church on +Tower Green, in the Tower of London, is so appropriately +dedicated. On that day suit and service had to be performed +by tenants for their lands, which thus obtained, in course of +time, the corrupted title of “Peter’s Finger” +property.</p> +<p>Around the village so slightingly characterised in <i>The Hand +of Ethelberta</i> there is little save “the everlasting +heath,” mentioned in that story, “the black hills +bulging against the sky, the barrows upon their round summits +like warts on a swarthy skin.” It is true the road +leads at last to Bere Regis, but it has little individuality and +no further Hardyesque significance, and so may be disregarded in +these pages.</p> +<h2><a name="page270"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +270</span>CHAPTER XXV</h2> +<p style="text-align: center" class="gutsumm">WIMBORNE +MINSTER</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Wimborne Minster</span> or +“Warborne” in <i>Two on a Tower</i>—is, or was, +for the Romans and their works are altogether vanished from the +town, the <i>Vindogladia</i> of the Antonine Itinerary. If +you speak of it in the curt irreverent way of railways and their +time-tables, or in the equally curt, but only familiar, manner of +its inhabitants, it is merely “Wimborne.” In +their mouths, elision of the “Minster” merely +connotes affection and use, as one drops the titles or the +“Mister” of a friend, in speaking of him; but in the +case of railway usage it is the offensive familiarity of the +ill-bred, or, at the least, a derogatory saving of space and +type.</p> +<p>This common practice is all the more historically an outrage, +for had there been no Minster, there would have been no town of +Wimborne. It derives from an early religious settlement, +founded in <span class="GutSmall">A.D.</span> 700 near the site +of the forgotten Roman station, by Cuthburga, one of those +unsatisfactory princess spouses of the pietistic period of Saxon +dominion, who, married to the King of Northumbria, refused him +conjugal rights and finally established herself here, living a +life of “continual watchings and fastings,” and +finally dying of them. <a name="page271"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 271</span>We are not concerned to follow the +mazes of the early history of town and church. It suffered +the usual plunderings and burnings, the nuns were occasionally +carried off, sometimes against their will, at other times with +their consent, and at last, somewhere about <span +class="GutSmall">A.D.</span> 902, monks replaced them. The +whole foundation was re-established by Edward the Confessor, and +remained as a Collegiate church until 1547, when it was +disestablished, its revenues seized, and the building wholly +converted to the purposes of a parish church.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image270" href="images/p270a.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Sturminster Marshall" +title= +"Sturminster Marshall" + src="images/p270a.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p270b.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Anthony Etricke’s Tomb, Wimborne Minster" +title= +"Anthony Etricke’s Tomb, Wimborne Minster" + src="images/p270b.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Wimborne Minster might be made the subject of a lengthy +architectural disquisition. Its two towers, western and +central, are themselves pointers to its history; for they show, +not in the different periods at which they were built, but in the +richness of the one and the comparative plainness of the other, +the combined uses of the building in days of old. The +central tower, of transitional Norman design, and remarkably like +the towers of Exeter cathedral, was originally surmounted by a +stone spire, which fell in 1600. Its elaboration is +explained by its having been a part of the monastic church, while +the western tower erected about 1460, belonged to the parochial +building.</p> +<p>The church, endowed with two—and two +dissimilar—towers, is a splendid feature in the streets of +the old town. It and the town gain dignity and interest in +an amazing degree, and here in Wimborne the pinnacled +battlemented outlines “make” both town and Minster, +in the pictorial sense. They bulk darkly and largely across +the yellow sandiness of the broad market-place, and sort +themselves into endless and changeful combinations down the <a +name="page272"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 272</span>narrower +streets. Apart, too, from these important considerations, +the Minster is exceptionally rich in curious features, outside +its architectural details.</p> +<p>Our ancestors possessed a quaint mixture of serious devotion +and light-hearted childishness, and we are the richer for +it. Thus, high up on the external wall of the western +tower, the observant will notice the odd little effigy, carved, +painted and gilt, resembling a grenadier of a century ago, or a +French gendarme of a past <i>régime</i>: it is difficult +to assign it with certainty, and assuredly it does not look so +old as 1600, the date when it is stated to have been placed +here. His business is that of a quarter-jack, and he +strikes the quarters upon a bell on either side of him. The +clock within, an astronomical contrivance made in 1320 by that +same ingenious Glastonbury monk, Peter Lightfoot, who was the +author of the famous clock of Wells Cathedral, represents the +courses of the sun, moon, and stars.</p> +<p>The Minster, in short, is a museum of antiquities, found +particularly interesting by the half-day excursionists from +Bournemouth who are its chief visitors and carry away a fine +confused recollection of their scamper round it. Here, in a +room above the vestry, is the Chained Library, a collection of +over two hundred and forty volumes, mostly chained to iron +rods. Some of the books are very early, but the collection +was formed in 1686. Perhaps, for the sake of its story, the +copy of Sir Walter Raleigh’s “History of the +World” is even more interesting than “The Whole Duty +of Man” and the “Breeches Bible,” for it still +displays the carefully mended hundred leaves burnt through when +<a name="page273"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 273</span>the boy, +afterwards poet, Prior fell asleep over his reading of it and +upset the candle, with this result. Each damaged page was +neatly mended by him and the missing letters so carefully +restored that it is difficult, until attention is drawn to the +repair, to detect anything exceptional. Prior was born at +Wimborne in 1664, as a brass tablet in the western tower to his +“perennial and fragrant” memory tells us.</p> +<p> +<a name="image273" href="images/p273.jpg"> +<img class='floatright' alt= +"The Wimborne Clock-Jack" +title= +"The Wimborne Clock-Jack" + src="images/p273.jpg" /> +</a>But of paramount interest to sightseers, far transcending the +ironbound deed-chests, some hollowed from a single trunk, and the +tombs of the noble and knightly, is the last resting-place of +Anthony Etricke, in the south wall of the choir aisle. +Anthony Etricke was a personage of some local distinction in his +day, for besides being a man of wealth, he was first Recorder of +Poole. He has also won a little niche in the history of +England by no effort of his own: a distinction thrust upon him by +circumstance, and one which might have fallen upon any other +local magistrate. Sentimentally speaking, it is also a +wholly invidious and undesirable fame or notoriety, and was so +regarded by the good folk of the town. Etricke, residing at +Holt, near the spot where the unfortunate Duke of Monmouth was +captured, was the magistrate before whom the wretched fugitive +was brought. Another might possibly, greatly daring, have +secured the escape of that romantic figure, and <a +name="page274"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 274</span>by so doing +at the same time have altered the course of English history and +earned the admiration of those who admire chivalric deeds. +But Etricke was not of this stamp, and was, moreover, of that old +faith which the bigoted James was striving to reintroduce: while +Monmouth was the Protestant champion. Alas! poor +champion. Etricke at once performed his bounden duty as a +magistrate, and also satisfied his own private feelings; and +Monmouth ended miserably.</p> +<p>Etricke never regained popularity in his district, and lived +for eighteen years longer, a shunned and soured man. The +story tells how he took what may surely be regarded as the odd +and altogether insufficient revenge of declaring that he would be +buried neither in the church of Wimborne nor out of it, and +accordingly in his lifetime had a niche prepared here, in the +wall, where the polished black slate sarcophagus, still seen +above ground, was placed. He was eccentric beyond this, for +he had conceived the date of his death and caused it to be boldly +carved on the side, between two of the seven shields of arms that +in braggart fashion are made to redound to the glory of the +Etricke family. That year he had imagined would be 1691, +but he actually survived until 1703, and the date was accordingly +altered (as seen to this day) when at last, to the satisfaction +of Wimborne, he did demise. For the keeping of his tomb in +good repair he left twenty shillings annually, a sum still +administered by the Charity Commissioners; and it certainly +cannot be said that he does not receive value for his money, +because his eccentric lair is maintained, heraldic cognisances +and all, in the most perfect condition. <a +name="page275"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 275</span>Any +ill-will this solemn personage may have felt towards Wimborne is +altogether robbed of satisfaction nowadays, and his gloomy ghost +may, for all we know, be enraged at the thought of the attraction +his eccentricity has for visitors and the trade in photographs it +has provoked, much to the material well-being of the town.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image274" href="images/p274.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Wimborne Minster; The Minster and the Grammar School" +title= +"Wimborne Minster; The Minster and the Grammar School" + src="images/p274.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>The pilgrim of the Hardy country, come to Wimborne—I +should have said “Warborne”—to see that Grammar +School where, to quote Haymoss Fry, “they draw up young +gam’sters’ brains like rhubarb under a ninepenny pan, +my lady, excusing my common way,” is like to be +disappointed, for the place where “they hit so much larning +into en that ’a could talk like the day of Pentecost” +is no longer an ancient building. ’Tis true, the +foundation is what the country folk might call an “old +arnshunt” thing enough, being the work indeed of that very +great founder of schools and colleges, the Lady Margaret, +Countess of Richmond, mother of Henry VII. It was refounded +by Queen Elizabeth, who stripped all the credit of this good deed +in a naughty world from the memory of the pious countess, and +willed that it should be styled “The Grammar School of the +Foundation of Queen Elizabeth in Wimborne Minster in the County +of Dorset.” That was pretty bad, but worse came with +the whirling years. James I., like the shabby fellow he +was, raised a question respecting the validity of its charter, +and was only bought off with £600; and Charles I., unlike +the noble, magnanimous sovereign he is commonly thought to be, +bled the institution to the tune of another £1,000, by a +similar dodge. The wonder is that it has survived <a +name="page276"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 276</span>at all, and +not only survived, but flourished and was able, so long ago as +1851, to build itself that new and substantial home which is so +scholastically useful, but at the same time disappointing to the +literary pilgrim who, at the place where Swithin St. Cleeve was +educated, hoped to find a picturesque building of mediæval +age.</p> +<h2><a name="page277"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +277</span>CHAPTER XXVI</h2> +<p style="text-align: center" class="gutsumm">WIMBORNE MINSTER TO +SHAFTESBURY</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Wimborne</span> shall here be the +starting-point of a twenty-eight miles route, that in its +south-easterly to north-westerly direction, is as easy as the one +north to south of the road between Sherborne and Weymouth. +It follows the valley of the Stour the whole way, and only at its +conclusion brings up butt against the hill on which Shaftesbury +is built.</p> +<p>There is at the outset from Wimborne a choice between the +easeful and the toilsome. You may elect to go directly +up-along, to the height frowned down upon by the greater height +of Badbury Rings, or may go more circuitously but by more level +ways, through Corfe Mullen and Sturminster Marshall. On the +first route, beautifully overhung by elms, lies Kingston Lacy, +the old seat of the Bankes family, rebuilt by Sir Ralph Bankes in +1663, and now a very treasure-house of art and historic +relics. Here one may, greatly favoured, see and touch those +keys of Corfe Castle, held so stoutly by the valorous Lady Bankes +in the two sieges she withstood.</p> +<p>A younger avenue of beeches lines the exposed road across the +shoulders of what has been identified as <i>Mons +Badonicus</i>—Badbury Rings—the scene of the +overwhelming victory gained in <span class="GutSmall">A.D.</span> +520, over <a name="page278"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +278</span>Cerdic and his Saxons by King Arthur and his +Britons. In later years, when at last Saxon dominion had +spread, and this had become Wessex, Saxons themselves encamped +where of old they had been defeated, and after them the Danes +occupied this inhospitable height. It is now tufted with a +clump of fir-trees, and, solemn and darkly looming against a +lowering sky, looks a fitting scene for any national portent of +evil.</p> +<p>They are less impressive roads that lead by the Stour to Corfe +Mullen and Sturminster Marshall. There the farmer reaps his +heavy crops of hay and cereals, and ploughs and sows and reaps +again, and history is only a matter of comparison between this +year of a poor harvest, when prices are high and marketable +produce little, and last year of a bumper, when the horn of Ceres +was full and prices low. No matter what the yield, there is +ever a something to dash the farmer’s cup from his +expectant lips.</p> +<p>At Bailey Corner, three miles from Wimborne, a broad main road +branches off from our route, going to Bere Regis and +Dorchester. This is the road made at the suggestion of Mr. +Erle-Drax of Charborough Park, whose property, it may be +supposed, gained in some way from it. Charborough Park is +one of the originals whence Welland House and the tower of <i>Two +on a Tower</i> were drawn, and therefore demands a deviation of +two miles from our route.</p> +<p>It is a straight road and a lonely that leads to the main +entrance-lodge of this seat of the Erle-Drax family, past a +long-continued brick boundary-wall that must have cost a small +fortune, and decorated at intervals with arches surmounted by +effigies of <a name="page279"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +279</span>stags and lions. Time has dealt very severely +with some of the squire’s stags, shorn here and there of a +limb, and in one instance presenting a headless awfulness to the +gaze of the pilgrim, who can scarce repress a shudder at sight of +it, even though the destruction provides a little comedy of its +own, in the revelation that these imposing “stone” +decorations are really of plaster, and hollow.</p> +<p>The principal entrance to Charborough Park, the one feature +that breaks the long, straight perspective of this undeviating +road, seems to have been erected by the squire as a species of +permanent self-advertising hoarding, for it is boldly inscribed: +“This road from Wimborne to Dorchester was projected and +completed through the instrumentality of J. S. W. Sawbridge +Erle-Drax, Esq., M.P., in the years 1841 and 1842.” +Cæsar himself could have done no more than was performed by +this magnate of the many names, and could not with greater +magnificence have suppressed the fact that what his Parliamentary +influence procured, the public purse paid for.</p> +<p>There is this essential difference between Charborough Park +and “Welland House.” Charborough is very +closely guarded from intrusion, and none who cannot show a real +reason for entering is allowed through the jealously closed and +locked gates of the lodges.</p> +<p>The residence of Lady Constantine was, however, very readily +accessible, and, “as is occasionally the case with +old-fashioned manors, possessed none of the exclusiveness found +in some aristocratic settlements. The parishioners looked +upon the park avenue as their natural thoroughfare, particularly +for christenings, weddings, and funerals, which passed <a +name="page280"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 280</span>the +squire’s mansion, with due considerations as to the scenic +effect of the same from the manor windows.” So much +to show the composite nature of the scene drawn in <i>Two on a +Tower</i>.</p> +<p>The tower—the “Rings Hill Speer” of the +story—stands in the park, at a considerable distance from +the house on the other side of a gentle dip, but well within +sight of the drawing-room windows. In between, across the +turf and disappearing into the woodlands to right and left, roam +the deer that so plentifully inhabit this beautiful domain. +The tower is approached by roomy stone staircases, now overgrown +with grass, moss, and fungi, and so far from it or its approaches +being in “the Tuscan order of architecture,” they are +designed in a most distinctive and aggressive Strawberry Hill +Gothic manner. Built originally by Major Drax in 1796, and +struck by lightning, it was rebuilt in 1839.</p> +<p>Returning now from this interlude and regaining Bailey Corner, +we come to Sturminster Marshall, a place that now, for all the +dignity of its name, is just a rustic village, with only that +name and an ancient church that was the “Stour +Minster” of the Earls of Pembroke, the Earls Marshal of +England, to affirm its vanished importance. Its village +green, bordered with scattered cottages, has a maypole, painted, +like a barber’s pole, with vivid bands of red, white, and +blue.</p> +<p>An expedition from this point, across the Stour to Shapwick, +although a roundabout pilgrimage, is not likely to be an +unrewarded exertion, for that is a village which, although +unknown to the greater world, has a local fame that, so long as +<a name="page281"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 281</span>rustic +satire lives, will assuredly not be allowed to die.</p> +<p> +<a name="image281" href="images/p281.jpg"> +<img class='floatright' alt= +"The Tower, Charborough Park" +title= +"The Tower, Charborough Park" + src="images/p281.jpg" /> +</a>Shapwick is not remote from the sea, but it might be a +midland village (and exceptionally ignorant at that) if we are to +believe the legend which accounts for the local name of +“Shapwick Wheel-offs,” by which its villagers are +known. According to this injurious tale, a shepherd, +watching his sheep on Shapwick Down at some period +unspecified—let us call it, as the children do, “once +upon a time,” or “ever so long ago”—found +a live crab, or lobster, that had fallen out of an itinerant +fishmonger’s cart. He was so alarmed at the sight of +the strange thing that he hurried into the village with the news +of it, and brought all the people out to see. With them was +the oldest inhabitant, a “tar’ble wold man,” +incapable of locomotion, brought in a wheelbarrow to pronounce, +out of the wisdom his accumulated years gave him, what this +unknown <a name="page282"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +282</span>monster might be. When his ancient eyes lighted +upon it, or rather, in the Do’set speech: “When a sin +’en, a carled out, tar’ble feared on ’en, +‘wheel I off, my sonnies, wheel I off.’” +So they wheeled him off, accordingly, well pleased to leave that +mysterious thing to itself.</p> +<p>As may well be supposed, the Shapwick folk are by no means +proud of their nickname, and it is therefore a little surprising +to find an old and very elaborate weathervane in the village, +surmounting the roof of a barn, and giving, in a quaintly +silhouetted group, a pictorial representation of the scene. +It seems that there were originally three more figures, behind +the barrow, but they have disappeared. Perhaps this is +evidence of attempts on the part of Shapwick folk to destroy the +record of their shame.</p> +<p>A succession of pretty villages—Spetisbury, Charlton +Marshall, Blandford St. Mary—enlivens the five miles of +road between Sturminster Marshall and Blandford; and then +Blandford itself, already described, is entered. Passing +through it, and skirting the grounds of Bryanstone, the Stour, +more beautiful than earlier on the route, is crossed, and the +twin villages of Durweston and Stourpaine, one on either bank, +are glimpsed. Then comes the large village of +Shillingstone, still steadfastly rural, despite its size, and +keeping to the ancient ways more markedly than Sturminster +Marshall, for it not only shares with that village the +peculiarity of owning a maypole, but a maypole of exceptional +height, and one still dressed and decorated with every +spring. This tall pole, tapering like the mast of a ship, +<a name="page283"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 283</span>is a +hundred and ten feet in height, and most carefully guarded with +wire stays against destruction by the stormy winds that in winter +sweep down the valley of the Stour.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image283" href="images/p283.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Weather-Vane at Shapwick: The “Shapwick Monster”" +title= +"Weather-Vane at Shapwick: The “Shapwick Monster”" + src="images/p283.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>If we were to name the Shillingstone maypole in accordance +with the date of its annual garlanding, it would rather be a +“Junepole,” for it is on the 9th of that month that +the pretty old ceremony and its attendant merrymakings are +held. This apparently arbitrary selection of a date is +explained by the old May Day games and rejoicings having been +held on May 29th, in the years after the Restoration of Charles +II. in 1660; and by the change from Old Style to New, more than a +hundred and fifty years later. That change, taking away +eleven days, converted what would have been May 29th into June +9th; and thus by gradual change this survival of the ancient +pagan festival <a name="page284"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +284</span>of Floralia is held when May Day has itself passed and +become a memory.</p> +<p>The pole has several times been restored. Its present +appearance is due to the restoration of October 1868, but the +arrow vane with which it was then surmounted appears to have been +blown down, and its improving mottoes—“Tanquam +sagitta” (Like as an arrow), and “Sic et nos” +(So even we)—lost. Another Latin inscription is +Englished thus:</p> +<p>“Their maypole, decayed by age, the rector and +inhabitants of Shillingstone, keeping their yearly May Games with +all due observance, have carefully restored it on the ninth day +of June 1850:</p> +<blockquote><p>“The fading garland mourns how short +life’s day,<br /> +The towering maypole heavenward points the way.<br /> +Read thou the lesson—seek to gather now<br /> +Undying wreaths to twine a deathless brow.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>All very pious and proper, no doubt, but wofully lacking in +the May Day spirit of the joy of life, and more fitting to the +“Memento mori” fashion of the neighbouring +churchyard.</p> +<p>In this old church of Shillingstone—or +“Shilling-Okeford,” as from the old manorial lords it +was once named—the pilgrim may see by the evidence of an +old tablet how a certain William Keen, a merchant of London, +fleeing terror-struck from the Great Plague, was overtaken by it +and died here in 1666.</p> +<p>The reader, versed in the oddities of place-names, will +perhaps not require the assurance that the name of Shillingstone +has nothing whatever to do with shillings; but if he doubts, let +it at once be said that it was so called long before that coin +was known. It was originally “Oakford” and <a +name="page285"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 285</span>became +“Schelin’s Oakford,” or “Schelin’s +Town,” when the manor was in Norman times given to an +ancestor of those who for centuries later continued to hold it +and in more elaborate fashion styled themselves Eschellings.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image285" href="images/p285.jpg"> +<img alt= +"The Maypole, Shillingstone" +title= +"The Maypole, Shillingstone" + src="images/p285.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Down over intervening hills the road, for a little space +forsaking its character of a valley route, comes beside the +stream again at Piddleford—or, as the Post Office +authorities prefer to call it “Fiddleford”—on +the way to Sturminster Newton, the “Stourcastle” of +<i>Tess</i>. This is the place mentioned at the opening of +the story, to which Tess was driving the load of beehives from +Marnhull at night, <a name="page286"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +286</span>when the lantern went out and the mailcart dashing into +the trap, killed the horse, Prince; thus starting the tragical +chain of events that led at last to Winchester gaol.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image286" href="images/p286.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Sturminster Newton: The White Hart Inn" +title= +"Sturminster Newton: The White Hart Inn" + src="images/p286.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Of Sturminster Newton, impressively styled on ordnance maps +“Sturminster Newton Castle,” Leland says: “The +townlette is no greate thing, and the building of it is +mene,” and, although it would not occur to a modern writer +to adopt that term, certainly there is little that is notable +about it. There is no “minster,” no +“castle,” and no “new town,” and little +to say, save that an ancient six-arched bridge crosses the weedy +Stour and that the battered stump of the market cross in the main +street seems in its decay to typify the history of the <a +name="page287"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 287</span>market +itself. As the church has been rebuilt, and as the castle +on the outskirts is now little more than a memory, the only +resort is to turn for some point of interest to that quaintly +thatched old inn, the White Hart, very much older than the +tablet, “W. M. P. 1708,” on its front would lead many +to suppose. It was probably restored at that date, after +those troublous times had passed in which the cross, just +opposite, lost its shaft, and when, in the fighting in the +streets between the Parliamentary dragoons and the associated +clubmen of the west, this house and others were fired and +Sturminster Newton very generally given over to the horrors of a +brutal conflict between troops trained to arms and a peasantry +unskilled in the use of the weapons with which they had hastily +equipped themselves. But, unprofessional soldiers though +they were, the clubmen at Sturminster gave an excellent account +of themselves, killing and wounding a number of the dragoons, and +taking sixteen others prisoners.</p> +<h2><a name="page288"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +288</span>CHAPTER XXVII</h2> +<p style="text-align: center" class="gutsumm">WIMBORNE MINSTER TO +SHAFTESBURY<br /> +(<i>continued</i>)</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Onwards</span> from Sturminster Newton the +road comes into the rich Vale of Blackmore and traverses levels +watered by the Lidden, in addition to the Stour. Turning +here to the right-hand and avoiding the way to Stalbridge, we +follow the steps of Tess to her home at “Marlott,” a +village to be identified with Marnhull.</p> +<p>Could we associate any cottage here with the birthplace of +Tess, how interesting a landmark that would be! But it is +not to be done. “Rolliver’s,” the +“Pure Drop” inn, may be the “Crown,” but +you who call there to wet a particularly dry whistle on a +scorching day will not find the name of Rolliver over the door, +either of this house or of another, with the picture-sign of a +dashing hussar outside. As to whether either or both of +them keep “a pretty brew,” as we are told +Rolliver’s did, I cannot tell you, for when dry, I drink +ginger-beer if it is to be got, and, if it isn’t, go +thirsty, refusing alike malt-liquors and the abominable gaseous +compounds made cheaply of harmful materials, sold expensively, +and rather thirst-provoking than quenching.</p> +<p><a name="page289"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +289</span>Marnhull is not precisely the type of village the +readers of <i>Tess</i> would picture as the home of a heroine +whose adventures have so constant a background of dairying. +It is, or was, a quarry-village, and the shallow pits that +supplied for stone the church and the cottages are still +prominent in a field to the left of the road to +Shaftesbury. Thus Marnhull is somewhat formal and prim, and +instead of the abundant thatch noticeable in the typical villages +of dairy farms, its houses are roofed with slates and tiles.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image289" href="images/p289.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Marnhull" +title= +"Marnhull" + src="images/p289.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>The church of Marnhull has a singularly fine tower, which, +although the details of its Perpendicular design are largely +intermingled with Renaissance ornament, is in general outline a +beautiful and imposing specimen of Gothic, built in that +period—the early eighteenth century—generally thought +impossible for Gothic art. It was in <a +name="page290"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 290</span>1718 that +this fine work arose out of the heap of ruins into which the old +tower had suddenly fallen, but it has almost every appearance of +being three hundred years older, and it seems likely that, as it +now stands, it was a free copy of its predecessor.</p> +<p>The body of the church is of much earlier date, and well +supplied with mediæval effigies and finely carved capitals +to its pillars. But it is not without amusement that one +reads the flamboyant epitaph to the Reverend Mr. Conyers Place, +M.A.,</p> +<blockquote><p>“the youngeft son of an ancient and +reputable family in the County of York, who, after he had been +liberally educated at Trinity College, in Cambridge, was invited +to the Mafter-fhip of the Grammar School in Dorchester, which he +governed many years with great succefs and applaufe till, weary +of the fatigue of it, he chofe to refign it. He was endowed +with many excellent talents, both natural and acquired: a lively +wit, a sound judgement, with solid and extenfive learning: he was +eminently Studious, yet remarkably facetious: attached to no +party, nor addicted to any caufe but that of Truth and Religion, +in the defence of whofe Doctrines he wrote many learned and +ingenious Treatifes; while he was efteemed by all worthy of the +greateft Preferments, he lived content with the praife of +deferving without enjoying any but the small Rectory of Poxwell, +in this County, which he held two years, and in the Pofsefsion of +which he died.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Shaftesbury, six miles onward from Marnhull, is soon seen, +standing as it does majestically upon a commanding hill. It +looks perhaps best from the point where the old farmstead of +Blynfield <a name="page291"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +291</span>stands, at the foot of the long and winding ascent, +whence you see the hillside common stretching up to the very edge +of the town. From distant points such as this, +“Shaston,” as Mr. Hardy, the milestones, and old +chroniclers agree to call it, wears the look of another Jerusalem +the Golden, and any who, thus looking upon this town of old +romance, should chance to come no nearer, might well carry away +an impression of a fairy city whose architecture was equal to +both its half-legendary history and its natural +surroundings. If such a traveller there be, let him rest +assured that nothing in Shaftesbury, saving only the view over +limitless miles of Vale, stretching away into the distance, is +worth the climbing up to it, and that to make its near and +intimate acquaintance is only to dispel that distant dream of an +unearthly beauty which afar off seems to belong to it.</p> +<p>Shaftesbury’s streets are in fact more than ordinarily +commonplace, and its houses grossly tasteless. It is as +though, despairing of ever bringing Shaftesbury back to a shadow +of the magnificence of history and architecture it once enjoyed, +the builders of the modern town built houses as plastiferously +ugly as they could. “Shaston” is described with +a wonderful sympathy and lightness of touch by Mr. +Hardy:—“The ancient British Palladour was, and is, in +itself the city of a dream. Vague imaginings of its castle, +its three mints, its magnificent apsidal abbey, the chief glory +of South Wessex, its twelve churches, its shrines, chantries, +hospitals, its gabled freestone mansions—all now ruthlessly +swept away—throw the visitor, even against his will, into a +pensive melancholy, <a name="page292"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 292</span>which the stimulating atmosphere and +limitless landscape around him can scarcely dispel. The +spot was the burial-place of a king and a queen, of abbots and +abbesses, saints and bishops, knights and squires. The +bones of King Edward ‘the Martyr,’ carefully removed +thither for holy preservation, brought Shaston a renown which +made it the resort of pilgrims from every part of Europe, and +enabled it to maintain a reputation extending far beyond English +shores. To this fair creation of the great Middle Ages the +Dissolution was, as historians tell us, the death-knell. +With the destruction of the enormous abbey the whole place +collapsed in a general ruin; the martyr’s bones met with +the fate of the sacred pile that held them, and not a stone is +now left to tell where they lie.”</p> +<p>“The natural picturesqueness and singularity of the town +still remain; but, strange to say, these qualities, which were +noted by many writers in ages when scenic beauty is said to have +been unappreciated, are passed over in this, and one of the +queerest and quaintest spots in England stands virtually +unvisited to-day. It has a unique position on the summit of +an almost perpendicular scarp, rising on the north, south and +west sides of the borough out of the deep alluvial Vale of +Blackmoor, the view from the Castle Green over three counties of +verdant pasture—South, Mid, and Nether Wessex—being +as sudden a surprise to the unexpectant traveller’s eyes as +the medicinal air is to his lungs. Impossible by a railway, +it can best be reached on foot, next best by light vehicles; and +it is hardly accessible to these but by a sort of isthmus on the +north-east, that connects it with the high chalk table-land on +that <a name="page293"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +293</span>side. Such is, and such was, the now-forgotten +Shaston or Palladour.”</p> +<p>That finely inaccurate chronicler, or rather romancer, +Geoffrey of Monmouth, who never lacked “historical” +details while his imagination remained in good preservation, has +some picturesque “facts” to narrate of +Shaftesbury. It was founded, says he, by Hudibras, +grandfather of King Lear, a trifle of 950 years before the +Christian era. Between that shamelessly absurd origin and +the earliest known mention of the place, in <span +class="GutSmall">A.D.</span> 880, when Alfred the Great founded a +nunnery here, there is thus a gulf—a very yawning gulf, +too—of one thousand, eight hundred and thirty years.</p> +<p>“Caer Palladour,” as it had been in early British +times, became “Edwardstow” when, in the year 979, the +body of the young king “martyred” at Corfe Castle was +translated from its resting-place at Wareham, but although his +shrine was the scene of many miracles and greatly resorted to, we +do not find that change of name so greatly favoured as was the +like change made in East Anglia, when, early in the eleventh +century, the town that had been Beodric’s Weorth became, +with the miracle-mongering of St. Edmund’s shrine, that +town of St. Edmundsbury which we know as Bury St. Edmunds. +No: as the expressive modern slang would phrase it, the name of +“Edwardstow” never really “caught on,” +and Caer Palladour, which had in the beginning of Saxon rule +become “Shaftesbyrig,” has so remained.</p> +<p>Nowadays the only vestiges of the great Abbey of Shaftesbury +are the fragments of encaustic tiles and carved stones, rarely +and with difficulty brought to light by antiquarian societies, +painfully digging <a name="page294"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +294</span>on the spot once occupied by it; and the great abbey +estates, the booty at the Dissolution seized by, or granted to, +Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, now belong to the Duke of +Westminster, whose Grosvenor crest of a wheatsheaf is prominent +in the town.</p> +<p>There are three parish churches at Shaftesbury; St. +James’s, as you climb upwards towards the town, and Holy +Trinity and St. Peter’s in the town itself. It is St. +Peter’s which is seen in the illustration of Gold Hill, by +whose incredibly steep ascent the pilgrim takes his way up from +the deep recesses of the Vale. This is the most difficult +approach, paved with granite setts divided off into broad steps, +so that in wet weather the hillside shall not slip away into +those depths; and with the craggy sides shored up by ancient +stone buttresses of prodigious bulk. The building that +closes in the view next the church tower, leaving but a narrow +entrance alley into the town, is the Town Hall and Market +House.</p> +<p>There are, of course, wider and less steep entrances to +Shaftesbury, but this shows it on its most characteristic +side.</p> +<p>Shaftesbury is chiefly associated in the pages of the Wessex +novels with <i>Jude the Obscure</i>, for here it was that the +long-suffering and inoffensive Phillotson—who (why?) always +reminds me of Wordsworth—obtained the school, which he and +the distracting Sue were to jointly keep. Their house, +“Old Grove’s Place,” is easily +recognisable. You come to it past Bimport, near the fork of +the roads that run severally to Motcombe and to East Stower, on +the edge of the plateau. It is an old house with projecting +porch and mullioned windows <a name="page295"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 295</span>through which it would be quite +easy, as in the story, to see the movements of any one inside; +and the upper room over the entrance is not too high above the +pavement for any one who, like Sue, leaped from the window, to +alight without injury. <a name="page296"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 296</span>Those people are probably few who +feel an oppressiveness in old houses such as that which worried +the highly strung and neurotic Sue Bridehead: “We +don’t live in the school, you know,” said she, +“but in that ancient dwelling across the way called Old +Grove’s Place. It is so antique and dismal that it +depresses me dreadfully. Such houses are very well to +visit, but not to live in. I feel crushed into the earth by +the weight of so many previous lives there spent. In a new +place like these schools, there is only your own life to +support.”</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image295" href="images/p295.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Gold Hill, Shaftesbury" +title= +"Gold Hill, Shaftesbury" + src="images/p295.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Close by are the schools. Looking upon them the more +than usually sentimental pilgrim, with, it may be, some ancient +tender passages of his own, stored up in the inviolate strong-box +of his memory, to be unlocked and drawn forth at odd times, may +think he identifies that window whence Sue, safely out of reach, +spoke with Jude, standing down on the footpath, and said, +“Oh, my poor friend and comrade, you’ll suffer +yet!”</p> +<h2><a name="page297"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +297</span>CHAPTER XXVIII</h2> +<p style="text-align: center" class="gutsumm">WIMBORNE MINSTER TO +HORTON AND MONMOUTH ASH</p> +<p><span class="smcap">It</span> is by the direct road to +Cranborne, and past the Gate Inn at Clapgate, that one reaches +Horton, where, at the intersection of the two broad main roads +from Wimborne to Cranborne, and from Shaftesbury to Ringwood, +stands Horton Inn, a fine, substantial old house, once depending +upon a great coaching and posting traffic, and even now that only +an occasional cyclist stays the night, dispensing good, +old-fashioned, solid comforts in its cosy and comfortable +rooms. When Horton Inn was built, let us say somewhere +about the time of Queen Anne (who, poor soul! is dead), those who +designed it, disregarding any temptations to be picturesque, +devoted their energies to good, honest workmanship, with the +result that nowadays one sees a building certainly lacking in +imagination, with windows equidistant and each the counterpart of +its fellow, but disclosing in every quoin and keystone, and in +each well and truly laid course of brickwork, the justness and +thoroughness of its design and execution. Within doors it +is the same: unobtrusive but excellent workmanship characterises +panelling and window-sashes, doors and handrails, <a +name="page298"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 298</span>with the +result that in its old age Horton Inn has an air of distinction +and dignity strongly marked to those who take an interest in +technical details, and attracting the notice of even the least +observant, who from its superior air generally conceive it to be +an old mansion converted to its present use. It is the +subject of an allusion in the tale of <i>Barbara of the House of +Grebe</i>: the “Lornton Inn” whence Barbara eloped +with the handsome Willowes, and where she was to meet her +disfigured husband, posting along the road from Southampton, on +his return from foreign parts.</p> +<p>The village of Horton, down the road, at some little distance +from the inn, has an oddly German-looking tower to its church, +containing the monument of “Squire Hastings” of +Woodlands, who died, aged 99 years, in 1650.</p> +<p>On an eerie hillside near by, in what of old was Horton Park, +but sold by the Sturts in 1793 to the Earl of Shaftesbury, and +disparked, stands the many-storied tower of what was once an +observatory built by Humphry Sturt. It is now an empty +shell, through whose ruined windows the wind sighs mournfully at +night, and the moonlight gleams ghostlike. It is an ugly +enough place in daylight, but should you particularly desire to +know what the creepy, uncanny feeling of being haunted is like, +why then, walk up on a windy night to “The Folly,” as +the villagers call it, and stand in it, listening to the wind +howling, grumbling or whispering in and out of the long, +shaft-like building, and nocturnal birds fluttering and squeaking +on the upper ledges. It is not a little gruesome.</p> +<p>This is one of the originals whence Mr. Hardy <a +name="page299"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 299</span>drew his +idea of the tower in <i>Two on a Tower</i>, and is certainly the +most impressive of them. Very many years have passed since +the old tower was used, and since the park in which it stands was +converted into a farm.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image298" href="images/p298.jpg"> +<img alt= +"The Observatory, Horton" +title= +"The Observatory, Horton" + src="images/p298.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>The Woodlands estate, on the broad acres belonging to the Earl +of Shaftesbury, is a sandy, heathy district of furze and +pine-trees, with a conspicuous ridge in the midst, shaped in a +semicircle and crested with those sombre trees. Here is +Shag Heath and the cultivated oasis called “The +Island” where on July 8th, 1685, the unfortunate Duke of +Monmouth was captured, hiding amid the bracken and undergrowth, +beneath an ash-tree. He might possibly have succeeded in +stealing away to the coast and so escaping, despite the +thoroughness of the search made by the Sussex Militia, spurred to +it by the reward of £5,000, offered for the capture of the +fugitive, had it not been for the information given by an old +woman who lived in a cottage <a name="page300"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 300</span>near at hand. She had seen +him, disguised as a shepherd, threading his way cautiously +through the heath, and he was accordingly discovered near the +spot she had indicated by a militiaman named Parkin. The +Duke, half-starved and unkempt from his hunted wanderings since +the fatal Sedgemoor fight of three days earlier, was found in +possession of his badge of the George, a pocket-book and several +guineas. In his pockets were a number of peas, the remains +of a quantity he had plucked, to stave off his hunger.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image299" href="images/p299.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Horton Inn: the “Lornton Inn” of “Barbara of +the House of Grebe”" +title= +"Horton Inn: the “Lornton Inn” of “Barbara of +the House of Grebe”" + src="images/p299.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image300" href="images/p300.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Monmouth Ash" +title= +"Monmouth Ash" + src="images/p300.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>A total of £5,500 was divided among Lord Lumley, the +officers, militiamen, and others concerned in the capture. +Among these was Amy Farant, <a name="page301"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 301</span>whose information had directly led +to it, and she received a sum of fifty pounds.</p> +<p>Local tradition points out the spot on the hillside where this +woman’s cottage formerly stood, overlooking the field +called “Monmouth Close” and the horror always felt by +the rustics at the taking of what they still call the +“blood-money” is seen in the story told of her +after-years. The price of blood brought a curse with +it. She fell upon evil times, and at last lived and died in +a state of rags and dirt, shunned by all. After her death, +the cottage itself speedily earned a sinister reputation, and was +at length either pulled down, or allowed to decay. The spot +is still called locally Louse, or more genteelly Slough, +Lane.</p> +<p>The “Monmouth Ash”—or “Aish,” in +the country speech—still survives, with a difference. +Those who, looking upon the present tree and thinking, despite +its decrepit and propped-up condition, that it cannot be over two +hundred years old—and therefore that this cannot be the +precise spot—may, with the reservation already made, be +reassured of its absolute genuineness. The original trunk +grew decayed in the long ago, and was blown down, but the present +tree is a growth from the “stool,” or root, of that +under which the unhappy Protestant Champion was discovered.</p> +<h2><a name="page302"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +302</span>CHAPTER XXIX</h2> +<p style="text-align: center" class="gutsumm">OVER THE HILLS, +BEYOND THE RAINBOW</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Beyond</span> the rainbow is Fairyland, +but no one has ever penetrated to that country, save in dreams, +to which nothing is impossible. There is also a +Rainbow-land in Dorsetshire, certainly not impossible of +achievement, but still a district of which no one knows anything, +saving only those who live in it, and those sturdy fellows, the +carriers, the Marco Polos and Livingstones of this age and +country, who every week or so travel from it to the nearest +market-town, and back again. The carriers are men of +strange speech and dress. Although sturdy, they move slowly +both in body and mind; and their tilt-carts are as slow as +themselves, and as dusty and travel-worn as the caravans of any +African expedition. The Rainbow country of Dorset is, in +fact, a country innocent of railways. It is comprised +within a rough circle made by tracing a course from Bere Regis to +Piddletrenthide, Cerne Abbas, Minterne Magna, Holnest, Sherborne, +Milborne Port, Stalbridge, Sturminster Newton, and Blandford, and +is not only in parts extremely hilly, but includes Bulbarrow, one +of the highest hills in Dorsetshire, 927 feet above sea-level, +and Nettlecombe Tout; among a fine diversified array <a +name="page303"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 303</span>of lesser +eminences. There is thus some considerable difficulty in +travelling out of it, and a very widespread disinclination to +penetrate into what may, not without considerable warranty, be +termed its “wilds.”</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image303" href="images/p303.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Bingham’s Melcombe" +title= +"Bingham’s Melcombe" + src="images/p303.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Wise men, who study maps, and from the tracks of watercourses +deduce easier, or at any rate, rather less arduous, routes, may +find a means of winning to this Rainbow country by turning off +the Piddletown and Bere Regis road at Burlestone, and thence +making along the slight valley of the Chesil Bourne or Divelish +stream. The small village of Dewlish on the map points to +the amazing colonial energy <a name="page304"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 304</span>of the Roman, for here, in a +district that even we moderns are accustomed to think remote, was +found a fine Roman pavement, many years ago. In another two +miles and a half the valley closes in, and the neighbourhood of +those big brothers, Bulbarrow and Nettlecombe Tout, is evident +from their smaller kindred, on either hand.</p> +<p>Here, under the shelter of the everlasting hills, and in a +“lew” warm hollow surrounded by benignant trees that +lovingly shut it in, is Bingham’s Melcombe. A little +pebbly brook, the Chesil Bourne, prattles down the combe, +sheep-bells sound from the hillsides, cattle low in the meadows, +and rooks scold and gibber, or lazily caw, in over-arching elms; +otherwise, all is still, for much more than even the rustic +scenes of Mr. Hardy’s especially farming story, +Bingham’s Melcombe is “far from the madding +crowd,” and there is nothing of it but a farmstead, the +tiny church, and the little gem of an ancient manor-house. +For all that Bingham’s Melcombe is so insignificant, it has +sent out at least one distinguished man. Fluellen boasted +that there were “good men porn at Monmouth,” and here +was born that Sir Richard Bingham who earns the praise of Fuller, +as being “a brave soldier and <i>fortis et felix</i> in all +his undertakings.” He lies, as a brave soldier +should, but all brave soldiers cannot, in Westminster +Abbey. The Binghams of Bingham’s Melcombe came from a +younger son of the Binghams of Sutton Bingham in Somersetshire, +and early allied themselves with prominent families. The +ducally crowned lion rampant of the Turbervilles quartered on +their ancestral shield owes its place there to the marriage <a +name="page305"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 305</span>of Robert +Bingham, about the reign of Henry III., or Edward I., with the +daughter and heiress of Robert Turberville.</p> +<p>These long-descended Binghams maintained their hold upon this +lovely old home of theirs from the middle of the thirteenth +century until recently. Now it has passed into other +hands. A member of the family, Canon Bingham, was the +original of the “Parson Tringham,” the learned +antiquary, who, in the opening pages of <i>Tess of the +D’Urbervilles</i>, so indiscreetly informs old John +Durbeyfield, the haggler, of his distinguished ancestry.</p> +<p>The manor-house of Bingham’s Melcombe, within its +courtyard, is a perfect example of a sixteenth-century country +residence. The courtyard, entered by a gatehouse, discloses +stone-gabled buildings at the sides, with the highly carved and +decorated projecting gable of the hall in front; displaying with +a wealth of mantling the Bingham coat of arms, the whole +overgrown with trailing roses.</p> +<p>A wild, chalky country, very knobbly and with constant hills +and dales, leads away to westward, past Melcombe Horsey, to the +hamlet and starved hillside farms of Plush, where flints abound, +water is scarce, and farmers are obliged to depend largely upon +the “dew-ponds” made on the arid downs. Here is +Dole’s Ash farm, the original of “Flintcomb +Ash,” the “starve-acre place” where Tess toiled +among the other weariful hands in the great swede-fields, +“a hundred odd acres in one patch,” with not a tree +in sight: Rainbow-land is not all fertile and roseate. The +farm, as Mr. Hardy describes it, is situated “above stony +<a name="page306"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +306</span>lanchets—the outcrop of siliceous veins in the +chalk formation, composed of myriads of loose white flints in +bulbous, cusped, and phallic shapes,” and is at the other +extreme from the fertility and sheltered beauty of the Valley of +the Frome, the “Vale of Great Dairies.”</p> +<p>Very different from the forbidding westerly range from +Bingham’s Melcombe is the country immediately to the +east. There the village of Milton Abbas lies enfolded +between the richly wooded hills, where the little Mill Bourne +rises, at the foot of an alarming but wonderfully picturesque +descent; and the woodland shade comes to the back door of every +cottage.</p> +<p>Milton Abbas is a remarkable place, and owes its long lines of +regularly spaced cottages, all of the same design, to the +autocratic whim of Joseph Damer, Baron Milton and first Earl of +Dorchester, who (then a commoner) purchased the large and +beautiful estate in 1752, and, demolishing the old village, which +rose humbly on the outskirts of the magnificent abbey, rebuilt +it, a mile away, in 1786. Milton Abbas is, indeed, the +precursor of many recent “model” villages, and +typical of the highhanded ways of the eighteenth-century landed +gentry, who could not endure the sight of a cottage from the +windows of their mansions; and so forthwith, in the manner of +Eastern potentates, whisked whole villages and populations away +from between the wind and their gentility. Each cottage is +built four-square, with thatched roof and equidistant doors and +windows, all in the Doll’s House or Noah’s Ark order +of architecture, and there is scarce a pin to choose between any +of them. Half-way down <a name="page307"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 307</span>the street is the almshouse, and +opposite is the church, and from their presence it will be seen +that Lord Dorchester’s village-transplanting was complete +and highly methodical. Now that time has weathered his +model village, and the chestnut trees planted between the +cottages have grown up, Milton Abbas is a not unpleasing +curiosity.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image306" href="images/p306.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Milton Abbas" +title= +"Milton Abbas" + src="images/p306.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>But Milton Park, beyond the village, contains the greatest +surprise, in the almost perfect condition of the surviving abbey +church, rising in all the stately bulk and beautiful elaboration +of a cathedral; beside the great mansion built for Lord +Dorchester in 1771 by Sir William Chambers, familiar to Londoners +as the architect of Somerset House.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image307" href="images/p307.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Milton Abbas, an early “Model” Village" +title= +"Milton Abbas, an early “Model” Village" + src="images/p307.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>That explorer of this Wessex unknown country, this Land Beyond +the Rainbow, who, setting forth uninstructed in what he shall +find, comes all unwittingly upon this generally unheard-of abbey, +is greatly to be envied, for it is to him as much of a surprise +as though its existence had never been <a +name="page308"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 308</span>breathed +beyond the rim of the hills down in whose hollows it lies hid; +and to him falls the exquisite pleasure of what is nothing less +than a discovery. Coming into the park, all unsuspectingly, +the abbey church is disclosed against a wooded background of +hills, strikingly like the first glimpse of Wells Cathedral, +underneath the Mendips.</p> +<p>Milton Abbey, the “Middleton Abbey” of <i>The +Woodlanders</i>, was founded so early as <span +class="GutSmall">A.D.</span> 933, by Athelstan, and in thirty +years from that date became a Benedictine monastery. +Nothing, however, of that early time has survived, and the great +building we now see belongs to the period between 1322 and 1492, +when it was gradually rebuilt, after having been struck by +lightning and wholly destroyed in 1309. But the noble +building rising so beautifully from the gravel drives and trim +lawns of this park is but a completed portion of an intended +design. It consists of choir, tower, and north and south +transepts, and extends a total length of 132 feet. Had not +the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539 put an end to this +lovely retreat of the Benedictine fraternity, a nave would have +been added. To Sir John Tregonwell, King’s Proctor in +the divorce of Henry VIII. and Katherine of Aragon, fell what may +reasonably be called this fine piece of “spoil”; for +the price of one thousand pounds at which he bought the monkish +estates of Milton Abbas can scarce be regarded as adequate +purchase money. Coming at last into the hands of Joseph +Damer, the domestic offices of the monastery, which had until +then survived in almost perfect condition, were with one +exception utterly destroyed, and the existing mansion built in a +<a name="page309"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 309</span>bastard +“Gothic” style, as understood by Chambers. The +sole exception is the grand Abbot’s Hall, enshrined within +that eighteenth-century building, and entered from the farther +side of the great quadrangle. Now in use as a drawing-room, +there is probably no more stately room of that description in +existence. It has the combined interest and beauty of size, +loftiness and exquisite workmanship in stone and carved wood, +with antiquity.</p> +<p> +<a name="image309" href="images/p309.jpg"> +<img class='floatleft' alt= +"Abbot Milton’s Rebus, Milton Abbey" +title= +"Abbot Milton’s Rebus, Milton Abbey" + src="images/p309.jpg" /> +</a>The abbey church stands immediately to the south of the +mansion, separated from it only by lawns and a drive, and is used +as a chapel by the present owner of the estate, a nephew of the +late Baron Hambro, who restored it at great cost under the +professional advice of that arch-restorer, Sir Gilbert +Scott. The solitude, the size and beauty of the interior, +are very impressive. Here is a place of worship like a +cathedral, used for the prayers of a private household, and if +you can by any means manage to forget the grotesque <a +name="page310"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +310</span>disproportion of ancient size and magnificence to +modern use, you will feel very reverent indeed.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a name="image310" href="images/p310.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Milton Abbey" +title= +"Milton Abbey" + src="images/p310.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>There is a monument here to that fortunate and successful +time-server, Sir John Tregonwell, who so neatly trimmed the sails +of his public conduct in those times of quick-change, between the +reigns of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, that, although a Roman +Catholic, he managed to enrich himself at the expense of the old +religion’s misfortunes, and to die at peace with all men, +although in the possession of property belonging to others. +There is also a most exquisitely sculptured marble monument by +Carlini to Lady Milton, who died in 1775. It represents her +in the costume of that period, with her husband bending anxiously +over her. A quaint little piece of Gothic fancy will be +seen on one of the walls, in the shape of the sculptured rebus of +one Abbot William Middleton, with the Arabic date, 1514, and the +device of a mill on a tun, or barrel. Thus did the +strenuous minds of the Middle Ages unbend to childish fancies and +puns in stone.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page311"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 311</span> +<a name="image311" href="images/p311.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Turnworth House" +title= +"Turnworth House" + src="images/p311.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>A sign of the times may be noted, in the restoration and +re-dedication of the long-desecrated Chapel of St. Catherine, on +the hilltop to the east of the abbey. When the monastery +was dissolved, the chapel of course fell out of use, and so +remained until recently. It had in turn been used as a +pigeon-house, a labourer’s cottage, a carpenter’s +shop, and a lumber-room, and was falling into complete decay when +Mr. Everard Hambro in 1903 <a name="page312"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 312</span>decided to restore it. The +varied Saxon, Norman, and Perpendicular architecture was +accordingly repaired, and the building reconsecrated on St. +Catherine’s night of the same year.</p> +<p>Through Winterborne Houghton, and Winterborne Stickland, two +of the eleven Dorsetshire Winterbornes, named from a chalk stream +that flows into the Stour at Sturminster Marshall, we come to +another <i>Woodlanders</i> landmark, Turnworth House, the +“Great Hintock House,” where Mrs. Charmond, +fascinator of the surgeon Fitzpiers, lived. It is situated +just as in the tale, in a deep and lonely dell:</p> +<blockquote><p>“To describe it as standing in a hollow +would not express the situation of the manor-house; it stood in a +hole. But the hole was full of beauty. From the spot +which Grace had reached a stone could easily have been thrown +over or into the birds’-nested chimneys of the +mansion. Its walls were surmounted by a battlemented +parapet; but the grey lead roofs were quite visible behind it, +with their gutters, laps, rolls, and skylights. . . . The +front of the house was an ordinary manorial presentation of +Elizabethan windows, mullioned and hooded, worked in rich +snuff-coloured freestone from local quarries. . . . Above +the house was a dense plantation, the roots of whose trees were +above the level of the chimneys.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>From Turnworth the way out of Rainbow-land by way of +Durweston, Stourpaine, and Blandford is easy: a <i>facilis +descensus</i>, as well in spirit as in the matter of gradients, +for thus you come out of the untravelled and the unknown into the +well-worn tracks and intimate life of every day.</p> +<h2><a name="page313"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +313</span>INDEX.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Abbot’s Ann</span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page23">23</a></span></p> +<p>“Abbot’s Cernel,” Cerne Abbas, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page31">31</a></span>–38, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page116">116</a></span>, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page170">170</a></span>, +<span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page199">199</a></span>–203, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page206">206</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page302">302</a></span></p> +<p>Abbotsbury, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page84">84</a></span>, <span class="imageref"><a +href="#image235">235</a></span>, <span class="imageref"><a +href="#image236">236</a></span></p> +<p>“Aldbrickham,” Reading, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page2">2</a></span></p> +<p>Aldershot, “Quartershot,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page2">2</a></span></p> +<p>“Alfredston,” Wantage, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page2">2</a></span></p> +<p>Andover, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page23">23</a></span></p> +<p>“Anglebury,” Wareham, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page10">10</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page38">38</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page86">86</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page111">111</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page113">113</a></span>–122, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page138">138</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page192">192</a></span></p> +<p><i>Anna</i>, <i>Lady Baxby</i>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page189">189</a></span></p> +<p>Anton, River, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page23">23</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page24">24</a></span></p> +<p>Athelhampton, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page54">54</a></span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p><span class="smcap">Bankes Family</span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page37">37</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page106">106</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page108">108</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page111">111</a></span></p> +<p><i>Barbara of the House of Grebe</i>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page43">43</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page298">298</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page299">299</a></span></p> +<p>Barnes, Reverend William, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page65">65</a></span></p> +<p>Basingstoke, “Stoke-Barehills,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page2">2</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page3">3</a></span></p> +<p>Batcombe, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page171">171</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page172">172</a></span></p> +<p>Bathsheba’s Farm, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page57">57</a></span>–59</p> +<p>Beaminster, “Emminster,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page38">38</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page170">170</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page244">244</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page245">245</a></span></p> +<p>Bere Heath, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page50">50</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page128">128</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page130">130</a></span></p> +<p>Bere Regis, “Kingsbere-sub-Greenhill,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page54">54</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page126">126</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page127">127</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page132">132</a></span>–146, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page163">163</a></span>, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page302">302</a></span></p> +<p>Berkshire, “North Wessex,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page2">2</a></span></p> +<p>Bincombe, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page211">211</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page248">248</a></span>–250</p> +<p>Bindon Abbey, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page122">122</a></span></p> +<p>Bindon Abbey Mill, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page123">123</a></span></p> +<p>Bingham’s Melcombe, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page303">303</a></span>–306</p> +<p>Blackmore, or Blackmoor, Vale of, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page36">36</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page38">38</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page39">39</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page65">65</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page169">169</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page191">191</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page195">195</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page197">197</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page198">198</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page288">288</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page291">291</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page292">292</a></span></p> +<p>Blandford Forum, “Shottsford Forum,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page39">39</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page42">42</a></span>–47, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page138">138</a></span>, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page282">282</a></span>, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page302">302</a></span></p> +<p>Bloody Assize, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page83">83</a></span></p> +<p>Bloxworth, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page140">140</a></span></p> +<p>Bockhampton, Lower, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page157">157</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page160">160</a></span></p> +<p>Bockhampton, Upper, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page157">157</a></span>–160</p> +<p>Boscastle, “Castle Boterel,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page6">6</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page7">7</a></span></p> +<p>Bourne, River, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page259">259</a></span></p> +<p>Bournemouth, “Sandborne,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page31">31</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page88">88</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page257">257</a></span>–262</p> +<p>Bow and Arrow Castle, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page229">229</a></span></p> +<p>Bredy, River, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page237">237</a></span></p> +<p>Bridport, “Port Bredy,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page82">82</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page231">231</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page237">237</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page240">240</a></span>–244</p> +<p>Brit, River, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page237">237</a></span></p> +<p>Broadwey, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page212">212</a></span></p> +<p>Browning, Robert, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page37">37</a></span>,</p> +<p>Bryan’s Piddle, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page145">145</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page163">163</a></span></p> +<p>Bryanstone, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page46">46</a></span></p> +<p>“Budmouth,” Weymouth, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page71">71</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page200">200</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page207">207</a></span>, <span class="imageref"><a +href="#image209">209</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page210">210</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page212">212</a></span>–221, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page225">225</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page226">226</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page232">232</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page246">246</a></span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p>“<span class="smcap">Casterbridge</span>,” +Dorchester, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page26">26</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page35">35</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page38">38</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page47">47</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page58">58</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page61">61</a></span>–83, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page116">116</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page138">138</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page148">148</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page149">149</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page153">153</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page168">168</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page199">199</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page206">206</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page207">207</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page215">215</a></span></p> +<p>“Castle Boterel,” Boscastle, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page6">6</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page7">7</a></span></p> +<p><a name="page314"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +314</span>“Castle Royal,” Windsor, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page2">2</a></span></p> +<p>Castleton, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page186">186</a></span></p> +<p>Cerne Abbas, “Abbot’s Cernel,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page31">31</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page38">38</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page116">116</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page170">170</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page199">199</a></span>–203, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page206">206</a></span>, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page302">302</a></span></p> +<p>Cerne, River, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page205">205</a></span></p> +<p>“Chalk Newton,” Maiden Newton, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page168">168</a></span></p> +<p>Chamberlain’s Bridge, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page130">130</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page132">132</a></span></p> +<p>Charborough Park, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page50">50</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page123">123</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page136">136</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page192">192</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page278">278</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page279">279</a></span></p> +<p>Charminster, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page79">79</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page168">168</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page205">205</a></span></p> +<p>Chesil Beach, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page224">224</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page231">231</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page240">240</a></span></p> +<p>Chesil Bourn, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page304">304</a></span></p> +<p>“Christminster,” Oxford, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page3">3</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page5">5</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page6">6</a></span></p> +<p><i>Clavinium</i>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page207">207</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page246">246</a></span></p> +<p>“Cliff without a Name,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page8">8</a></span></p> +<p>Colyton House, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page78">78</a></span></p> +<p>“Conjuring Minterne,” <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page172">172</a></span></p> +<p>Coombe Bissett, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page35">35</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page40">40</a></span></p> +<p>Corfe Castle, “Corvsgate Castle,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page87">87</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page92">92</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page93">93</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page97">97</a></span>–113, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page121">121</a></span>, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page133">133</a></span>, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page138">138</a></span>, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page277">277</a></span></p> +<p>Corfe Mullen, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page277">277</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page278">278</a></span></p> +<p>Cornwall, “Nether Wessex,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page6">6</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page292">292</a></span></p> +<p>“Corvsgate Castle,” <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page87">87</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page92">92</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page93">93</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page97">97</a></span>–113, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page121">121</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page133">133</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page138">138</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page277">277</a></span></p> +<p>Cranborne Chase, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page35">35</a></span></p> +<p>Cross-in-Hand, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page170">170</a></span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p><i>Desperate Remedies</i>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page60">60</a></span></p> +<p>Devonshire, “Lower Wessex,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page2">2</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page6">6</a></span></p> +<p><i>Distracted Preacher</i>, <i>The</i>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page252">252</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page254">254</a></span></p> +<p>Dogbury, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page191">191</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page197">197</a></span></p> +<p>Dole’s Ash Farm, “Flintcomb Ash,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page170">170</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page305">305</a></span></p> +<p>Dorchester, “Casterbridge,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page26">26</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page35">35</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page38">38</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page47">47</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page58">58</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page61">61</a></span>–83, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page116">116</a></span>, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page138">138</a></span>, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page148">148</a></span>, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page149">149</a></span>, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page153">153</a></span>, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page168">168</a></span>, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page199">199</a></span>, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page206">206</a></span>, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page207">207</a></span>, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page215">215</a></span></p> +<p>Dorsetshire, “South Wessex,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page2">2</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page38">38</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page39">39</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page44">44</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page134">134</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page135">135</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page138">138</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page149">149</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page291">291</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page292">292</a></span></p> +<p>Drax family, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page193">193</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page194">194</a></span></p> +<p>Dungeon Hill, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page195">195</a></span></p> +<p>D’Urbervilles, the, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page37">37</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page124">124</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page126">126</a></span> <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page132">132</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page170">170</a></span></p> +<p><i>Durnovaria</i>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page62">62</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page80">80</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page207">207</a></span></p> +<p>“Durnover,” Fordington, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page61">61</a></span>–63, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page148">148</a></span>, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page149">149</a></span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p><span class="smcap">East Stoke</span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page122">122</a></span></p> +<p>Eastbury Park, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page40">40</a></span></p> +<p>“Egdon Heath,” <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page128">128</a></span>–130, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page132">132</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page161">161</a></span>–167, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page254">254</a></span>, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page258">258</a></span></p> +<p>“Emminster,” Beaminster, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page38">38</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page170">170</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page244">244</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page245">245</a></span></p> +<p>Encombe, “Enkworth Court,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page94">94</a></span>–96</p> +<p>“Endelstow,” <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page8">8</a></span></p> +<p>“Enkworth Court,” <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page94">94</a></span>–96</p> +<p>Erle-Drax, J. S. W. Sawbridge, Esq., M.P. <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page192">192</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page278">278</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page279">279</a></span></p> +<p>Evershot, “Evershead,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page169">169</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page172">172</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page198">198</a></span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p>“<span class="smcap">Falls Park</span>,” <span +class="smcap">Mells Park</span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page172">172</a></span>–175</p> +<p><i>Far from the Madding Crowd</i>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page43">43</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page48">48</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page53">53</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page56">56</a></span>–59, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page156">156</a></span>, +<span class="imageref"><a href="#image236">236</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page254">254</a></span></p> +<p>Fawley Magna, “Marygreen,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page2">2</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page4">4</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page94">94</a></span></p> +<p><i>Fellow Townsmen</i>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page237">237</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page241">241</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page243">243</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page244">244</a></span></p> +<p><i>Fiddler of the Reels</i>, <i>The</i>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page150">150</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page161">161</a></span></p> +<p><i>First Countess of Wessex</i>, <i>The</i>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page31">31</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page172">172</a></span>–175, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page237">237</a></span></p> +<p>“Flintcomb Ash,” Dole’s Ash Farm, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page170">170</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page305">305</a></span></p> +<p>“Flychett,” Lytchett Minster, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page268">268</a></span></p> +<p><i>For Conscience’ Sake</i>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page177">177</a></span></p> +<p>Fordington, “Durnover,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page61">61</a></span>–63, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page148">148</a></span>, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page149">149</a></span></p> +<p>Fortune’s Well, “Street of Wells,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page224">224</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page225">225</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page227">227</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page231">231</a></span></p> +<p>Frome, River, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page38">38</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page62">62</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page115">115</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page117">117</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page118">118</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page121">121</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page123">123</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page124">124</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page156">156</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page157">157</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page161">161</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page163">163</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page205">205</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page306">306</a></span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p>“<span class="smcap">Gaymead</span>,” Theale, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page2">2</a></span></p> +<p>“Giant of Cerne,” <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page203">203</a></span></p> +<p><a name="page315"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +315</span>Glydepath Lane, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page76">76</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page78">78</a></span></p> +<p>Goathorn, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page114">114</a></span></p> +<p>Godmanstone, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page205">205</a></span></p> +<p>“Gray’s Bridge,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page70">70</a></span></p> +<p>“Great Hintock,” Minterne Magna, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page39">39</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page168">168</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page191">191</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page198">198</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page302">302</a></span></p> +<p>“Great Hintock House,” Turnworth House, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page311">311</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page312">312</a></span></p> +<p><i>Group of Noble Dames</i>, <i>A</i>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page14">14</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page31">31</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page43">43</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page172">172</a></span>–176, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page189">189</a></span>, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page205">205</a></span>, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page237">237</a></span>, +<span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page297">297</a></span>–299</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p><span class="smcap">Hampshire</span>, “Upper +Wessex,” <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page2">2</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page257">257</a></span></p> +<p>Hamworthy, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page268">268</a></span></p> +<p><i>Hand of Ethelberta</i>, <i>The</i>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page86">86</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page90">90</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page93">93</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page94">94</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page98">98</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page268">268</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page269">269</a></span></p> +<p>Hangman’s Cottage, Dorchester, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page76">76</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page77">77</a></span></p> +<p>Hardy, Admiral Sir Thomas Masterman, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page66">66</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page232">232</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page233">233</a></span></p> +<p>Hardy, Thomas, birthplace of, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page158">158</a></span>–160</p> +<p>Hardy, Thomas, residence of, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page148">148</a></span></p> +<p>“Havenpool,” Poole, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page88">88</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page107">107</a></span>–109, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page111">111</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page140">140</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page261">261</a></span>–268</p> +<p><i>Hearts Insurgent</i>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page4">4</a></span></p> +<p>Heedless William’s Pond, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page160">160</a></span></p> +<p>“High Place Hall,” <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page78">78</a></span></p> +<p>High Stoy, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page39">39</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page191">191</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page197">197</a></span></p> +<p>“Higher Crowstairs,” <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page75">75</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page199">199</a></span></p> +<p>Holnest, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page123">123</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page191">191</a></span>–194, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page302">302</a></span></p> +<p>Horner family, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page173">173</a></span>–175</p> +<p>Horton, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page50">50</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page298">298</a></span></p> +<p>Horton Inn, “Lornton Inn,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page297">297</a></span>–299</p> +<p>Hurst, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page163">163</a></span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p><span class="smcap">Ilchester</span>, Earls of, <span +class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page172">172</a></span>–175</p> +<p>Ilsington Woods, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page159">159</a></span></p> +<p><i>Interlopers at the Knap</i>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page168">168</a></span></p> +<p>“Ivell,” Yeovil, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page169">169</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page176">176</a></span>–178</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p><span class="smcap">Jordan Hill</span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page246">246</a></span></p> +<p><i>Jude the Obscure</i>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page4">4</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page5">5</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page29">29</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page30">30</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page31">31</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page151">151</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page294">294</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page295">295</a></span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p>“<span class="smcap">Kennetbridge</span>,” <span +class="smcap">Newbury</span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page2">2</a></span></p> +<p>“King’s Hintock Court,” Melbury Park, <span +class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page172">172</a></span>–176</p> +<p>King’s Stag Bridge, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page195">195</a></span></p> +<p>“Kingsbere-sub-Greenhill,” Bere Regis, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page54">54</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page126">126</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page127">127</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page132">132</a></span>–146, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page163">163</a></span>, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page302">302</a></span></p> +<p>Kingston, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page92">92</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page93">93</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page94">94</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page97">97</a></span></p> +<p>Kingston House, “Knapwater House,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page60">60</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page150">150</a></span></p> +<p>Kingston Lacy, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page106">106</a></span></p> +<p>“Knapwater House,” Kingston House, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page60">60</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page150">150</a></span></p> +<p>“Knollsea,” Swanage, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page84">84</a></span>–92, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page97">97</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page111">111</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page257">257</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page264">264</a></span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p><i>Lady Mottisfont</i>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page14">14</a></span></p> +<p><i>Lady Penelope</i>, <i>The</i>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page205">205</a></span></p> +<p>Lainston, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page19">19</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page20">20</a></span></p> +<p>Langton Matravers, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page92">92</a></span></p> +<p>Launceston, “St. Launce’s,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page8">8</a></span></p> +<p>Lidden, River, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page195">195</a></span></p> +<p>Little Ann, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page23">23</a></span></p> +<p>“Little Hintock,” Melbury Osmund, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page176">176</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page198">198</a></span></p> +<p>“Little Jack Horner,” <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page174">174</a></span></p> +<p>Lobcombe Corner, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page26">26</a></span></p> +<p>Lodmoor Marsh, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page246">246</a></span></p> +<p>“Long Ash Lane,” <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page168">168</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page169">169</a></span></p> +<p>Long Burton, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page191">191</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page192">192</a></span></p> +<p>“Long Piddle,” Piddletrenthide, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page57">57</a></span></p> +<p>“Lornton Inn,” Horton Inn, <span +class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page297">297</a></span>–299</p> +<p>Lower Walterstone Farm, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page57">57</a></span>–59</p> +<p>“Lucetta’s house,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page78">78</a></span></p> +<p>Lulworth Cove, “Lullstead,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page139">139</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page254">254</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page255">255</a></span>–257</p> +<p>Lulworth West, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page254">254</a></span></p> +<p>Lytchett Minster, “Flychett,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page268">268</a></span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p><span class="smcap">Maiden Castle</span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page208">208</a></span></p> +<p>Maiden Newton, “Chalk Newton,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page168">168</a></span></p> +<p>Marnhull, “Marlott,” <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page36">36</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page285">285</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page288">288</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page290">290</a></span></p> +<p>Martinstown, or Winterborne St. Martin, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page153">153</a></span></p> +<p><a name="page316"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +316</span>“Marygreen,” Fawley Magna, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page2">2</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page4">4</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page94">94</a></span></p> +<p>Maumbury, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page71">71</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page72">72</a></span></p> +<p>Max Gate, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page63">63</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page148">148</a></span></p> +<p><i>Mayor of Casterbridge</i>, <i>The</i>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page23">23</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page25">25</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page26">26</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page63">63</a></span>–80, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page149">149</a></span></p> +<p><i>Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion</i>, <i>The</i>, +<span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page248">248</a></span>–250,</p> +<p>Melbury Osmund, “Little Hintock,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page176">176</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page198">198</a></span></p> +<p>Melbury Park, “King’s Hintock Court,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page172">172</a></span>–176</p> +<p>Melbury Sampford, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page172">172</a></span>–176</p> +<p>“Melchester,” Salisbury, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page16">16</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page26">26</a></span>–28, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page31">31</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page35">35</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page36">36</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page187">187</a></span></p> +<p>Melcombe Regis, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page66">66</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page210">210</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page215">215</a></span>–217, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page220">220</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page221">221</a></span></p> +<p>Mells Park, “Falls Park,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page172">172</a></span>–175</p> +<p>“Mellstock,” Stinsford, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page61">61</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page149">149</a></span>–151</p> +<p>Middlemarsh, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page194">194</a></span></p> +<p>“Middleton Abbey,” Milton Abbas, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page38">38</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page306">306</a></span>–311</p> +<p>Milborne Port, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page302">302</a></span></p> +<p>Milborne St. Andrew, “Millpond St. Jude’s,” +<span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page48">48</a></span>–50</p> +<p>Milton Abbas, “Middleton Abbey,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page38">38</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page306">306</a></span>–311</p> +<p>Minterne Magna, “Great Hintock,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page39">39</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page168">168</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page191">191</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page198">198</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page302">302</a></span></p> +<p>“Monmouth Ash,” <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page299">299</a></span>–301</p> +<p>Monmouth, Duke of, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page83">83</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page121">121</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page140">140</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page299">299</a></span>–301</p> +<p><i>Mottisfont</i>, <i>Lady</i>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page14">14</a></span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p><span class="smcap">Nether Cerne</span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page205">205</a></span></p> +<p>“Nether Mynton,” Owermoigne, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page252">252</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page253">253</a></span></p> +<p>Newbury, “Kennetbridge,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page2">2</a></span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p><span class="smcap">Observatory</span>, The, Horton, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page298">298</a></span></p> +<p>Old Sarum, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page21">21</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page28">28</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page179">179</a></span></p> +<p><i>On the Western Circuit</i>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page29">29</a></span></p> +<p>Osmington, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page250">250</a></span></p> +<p>“Overcombe,” Sutton Poyntz, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page246">246</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page247">247</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page250">250</a></span></p> +<p>Owermoigne, “Nether Mynton,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page252">252</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page253">253</a></span></p> +<p>Oxford, “Christminster,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page3">3</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page5">5</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page6">6</a></span></p> +<p>“Oxwell Hall,” Poxwell Manor, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page250">250</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page251">251</a></span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p><i>Pair of Blue Eyes</i>, <i>A</i>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page6">6</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page7">7</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page8">8</a></span></p> +<p><i>Penelope</i>, <i>The Lady</i>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page205">205</a></span></p> +<p>Pennsylvania Castle, “Sylvania Castle,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page229">229</a></span></p> +<p>Pentridge, “Trantridge,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page36">36</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page37">37</a></span></p> +<p>Piddle, River, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page54">54</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page57">57</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page117">117</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page121">121</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page132">132</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page144">144</a></span></p> +<p>Piddleford, or Fiddleford, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page285">285</a></span></p> +<p>Piddletown, “Weatherbury,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page53">53</a></span>–58, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page157">157</a></span></p> +<p>Piddletrenthide, “Long Piddle,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page57">57</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page302">302</a></span></p> +<p>Plush, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page170">170</a></span></p> +<p>Poole, “Havenpool,” <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page88">88</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page107">107</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page108">108</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page109">109</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page111">111</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page140">140</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page261">261</a></span>–268</p> +<p>Poole Harbour, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page39">39</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page114">114</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page117">117</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page131">131</a></span></p> +<p>“Port Bredy,” Bridport, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page82">82</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page231">231</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page237">237</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page240">240</a></span>–244</p> +<p>Portisham, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page232">232</a></span>–234</p> +<p>Portland Bill, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page224">224</a></span></p> +<p>Portland, Isle of, “Isle of Slingers,” <span +class="imageref"><a href="#image209">209</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page210">210</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page214">214</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page222">222</a></span>–231, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page240">240</a></span></p> +<p>Poundbury, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page79">79</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page206">206</a></span></p> +<p>Poxwell, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page250">250</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page290">290</a></span></p> +<p>Poxwell Manor, “Oxwell Hall,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page250">250</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page251">251</a></span></p> +<p>Preston, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page246">246</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page250">250</a></span></p> +<p>Pulham, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page195">195</a></span></p> +<p>“Pummery,” <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page206">206</a></span></p> +<p>Purbeck, Isle of, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page85">85</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page87">87</a></span>–89, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page97">97</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page115">115</a></span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p>“<span class="smcap">Quartershot</span>,” +Aldershot, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page2">2</a></span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p><span class="smcap">Radipole</span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page213">213</a></span></p> +<p>Reading, “Aldbrickham,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page2">2</a></span></p> +<p><i>Return of the Native</i>, <i>The</i>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page114">114</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page128">128</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page129">129</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page161">161</a></span></p> +<p>Revels Inn, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page199">199</a></span></p> +<p>Rye Hill, Bere Regis, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page131">131</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page132">132</a></span></p> +<p>Ryme Intrinseca, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page176">176</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page177">177</a></span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p><a name="page317"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 317</span><span +class="smcap">St. Juliot’s</span>, “<span +class="smcap">Endelstow</span>,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page8">8</a></span></p> +<p>“St. Launce’s,” Launceston, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page8">8</a></span></p> +<p>Salisbury, “Melchester,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page16">16</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page26">26</a></span>–28, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page31">31</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page35">35</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page36">36</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page187">187</a></span></p> +<p>Salisbury Plain, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page31">31</a></span></p> +<p>“Sandbourne,” Bournemouth, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page31">31</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page88">88</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page257">257</a></span>–262</p> +<p>Sandsfoot Castle, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page222">222</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page223">223</a></span></p> +<p>“Serpent,” The, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page155">155</a></span></p> +<p>Shaftesbury, “Shaston,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page39">39</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page277">277</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page290">290</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page291">291</a></span>–296</p> +<p>Shapwick, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page280">280</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page281">281</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page282">282</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page283">283</a></span></p> +<p>“Shapwick Wheeloffs,” <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page281">281</a></span></p> +<p>“Shaston,” Shaftesbury, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page39">39</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page277">277</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page290">290</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page291">291</a></span>–296</p> +<p>Sherborne, “Sherton Abbas,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page38">38</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page39">39</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page178">178</a></span>–191</p> +<p>Sherborne Castle, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page184">184</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page186">186</a></span>–190</p> +<p>“Sherton Abbas,” <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page38">38</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page39">39</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page178">178</a></span>–191</p> +<p>Shillingstone, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page282">282</a></span>–285</p> +<p>“Shottsford Forum,” Blandford Forum, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page39">39</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page42">42</a></span>–47, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page75">75</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page138">138</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page282">282</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page302">302</a></span></p> +<p>“Slingers, Isle of,” Isle of Portland, <span +class="imageref"><a href="#image209">209</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page210">210</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page214">214</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page221">221</a></span>–231, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page240">240</a></span></p> +<p><i>Some Crusted Characters</i>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page70">70</a></span></p> +<p>Somersetshire, “Outer Wessex,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page2">2</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page176">176</a></span></p> +<p>Sparsholt, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page20">20</a></span></p> +<p>Stalbridge, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page302">302</a></span></p> +<p>“Stickleford,” Tincleton, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page157">157</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page160">160</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page163">163</a></span></p> +<p>Stinsford, “Mellstock,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page61">61</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page149">149</a></span>–151</p> +<p>Stoborough, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page115">115</a></span></p> +<p>Stockbridge, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page16">16</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page21">21</a></span>–23, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page26">26</a></span></p> +<p>“Stoke-Barehills,” Basingstoke, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page2">2</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page3">3</a></span></p> +<p>Stonehenge, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page31">31</a></span>–34</p> +<p>Stour, River, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page38">38</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page277">277</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page278">278</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page280">280</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page282">282</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page283">283</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page288">288</a></span></p> +<p>“Stourcastle,” Sturminster Newton, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page39">39</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page286">286</a></span>–288</p> +<p>Strangways family, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page173">173</a></span>–175</p> +<p>“Street of Wells,” <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page224">224</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page225">225</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page227">227</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page231">231</a></span></p> +<p>Sturminster Marshall, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page38">38</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page277">277</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page278">278</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page280">280</a></span></p> +<p>Sturminster Newton, “Stourcastle,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page39">39</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page286">286</a></span>–288</p> +<p>Sutton Poyntz, “Overcombe,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page246">246</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page247">247</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page250">250</a></span></p> +<p>Swanage, “Knollsea,” <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page84">84</a></span>–92, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page97">97</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page111">111</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page257">257</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page264">264</a></span></p> +<p>“Sylvania Castle,” Pennsylvania Castle, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page229">229</a></span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p><span class="smcap">Tarent Abbey</span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page134">134</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page145">145</a></span></p> +<p>Tarrant Hinton, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page40">40</a></span></p> +<p>Templecombe, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page38">38</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page39">39</a></span></p> +<p>Ten Hatches, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page70">70</a></span></p> +<p>Tess of the D’Urbervilles, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page12">12</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page17">17</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page31">31</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page32">32</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page36">36</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page38">38</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page122">122</a></span>–126, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page143">143</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page147">147</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page161">161</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page168">168</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page170">170</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page199">199</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page244">244</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page257">257</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page258">258</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page285">285</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page288">288</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page289">289</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page305">305</a></span></p> +<p>Theale, “Gaymead,” <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page2">2</a></span></p> +<p><i>Three Strangers</i>, <i>The</i>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page75">75</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page199">199</a></span></p> +<p>Tincleton, “Stickleford,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page157">157</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page160">160</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page163">163</a></span></p> +<p><i>To Please his Wife</i>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page262">262</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page265">265</a></span></p> +<p><i>Tragedy of Two Ambitions</i>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page177">177</a></span></p> +<p>“Trantridge,” Pentridge, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page36">36</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page37">37</a></span></p> +<p>Trebarrow Sands, “Trebarwith Strand,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page7">7</a></span></p> +<p>“Troy Town,” <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page59">59</a></span></p> +<p><i>Trumpet Major</i>, <i>The</i>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page70">70</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page218">218</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page222">222</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page230">230</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page232">232</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page246">246</a></span>–248, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page250">250</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page253">253</a></span></p> +<p>Turberville, Dr. D’Albigny, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page30">30</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page146">146</a></span></p> +<p>Turberville, George, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page48">48</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page146">146</a></span></p> +<p>Turberville, John, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page123">123</a></span></p> +<p>Turberville, Thomas, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page146">146</a></span></p> +<p>Turberville, family, The, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page126">126</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page134">134</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page140">140</a></span>–144, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page146">146</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page304">304</a></span></p> +<p>Turnworth House, “Great Hintock House,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page311">311</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page312">312</a></span></p> +<p><i>Two on a Tower</i>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page49">49</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page53">53</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page115">115</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page270">270</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page275">275</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page278">278</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page280">280</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page298">298</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page299">299</a></span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p><i>Under the Greenwood Tree</i>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page59">59</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page149">149</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page150">150</a></span></p> +<p>Upper Bockhampton, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page63">63</a></span></p> +<p>Upwey, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page211">211</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page212">212</a></span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p><a name="page318"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +318</span>“<span class="smcap">Vale of Great +Dairies</span>,” <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page38">38</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page156">156</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page161">161</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page306">306</a></span></p> +<p>Vale of Little Dairies, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page38">38</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page39">39</a></span></p> +<p>“Vale of White Hart,” <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page196">196</a></span></p> +<p>Village Choirs, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page151">151</a></span>–155</p> +<p><i>Vindogladia</i>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page270">270</a></span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p><span class="smcap">Wallop</span>, <span +class="smcap">Little</span> (<span class="smcap">or +Middle</span>), <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page26">26</a></span></p> +<p>Wantage, “Alfredston,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page2">2</a></span></p> +<p>“Warborne,” <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page270">270</a></span></p> +<p>Wareham, “Anglebury,” <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page10">10</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page38">38</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page86">86</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page111">111</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page113">113</a></span>–122, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page138">138</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page192">192</a></span></p> +<p>“Warm’ell Cross,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page252">252</a></span></p> +<p>“Weatherbury,” Piddletown, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page53">53</a></span>–58, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page157">157</a></span></p> +<p>Weatherbury Castle, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page50">50</a></span>, <span class="imageref"><a +href="#image51">51</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page80">80</a></span></p> +<p>Weeke, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page18">18</a></span></p> +<p><i>Well Beloved</i>, <i>The</i>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page224">224</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page226">226</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page229">229</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page230">230</a></span></p> +<p>Welland House, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page50">50</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page278">278</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page279">279</a></span></p> +<p>“Wellbridge,” Woolbridge, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page124">124</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page127">127</a></span></p> +<p>“Wells, the Street of,” Fortune’s Well, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page224">224</a></span>, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page225">225</a></span>, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page227">227</a></span>, +<span class="indexpageno"><a href="#page231">231</a></span></p> +<p>Wessex, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page1">1</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page9">9</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page14">14</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page21">21</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page148">148</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page253">253</a></span></p> +<p>Wessex, Lower, Devonshire, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page2">2</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page6">6</a></span></p> +<p>Wessex, Mid, Wiltshire, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page2">2</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page292">292</a></span></p> +<p>Wessex, Nether, Cornwall, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page292">292</a></span></p> +<p>Wessex, North, Berkshire, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page2">2</a></span></p> +<p>Wessex, Outer, Somersetshire, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page2">2</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page176">176</a></span></p> +<p>Wessex, South, Dorsetshire, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page2">2</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page38">38</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page39">39</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page44">44</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page134">134</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page135">135</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page138">138</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page249">249</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page291">291</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page292">292</a></span></p> +<p>Wessex, Upper, Hampshire, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page2">2</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page257">257</a></span></p> +<p>West Bay, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page237">237</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page238">238</a></span>, <span class="imageref"><a +href="#image239">239</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page241">241</a></span></p> +<p>West Stafford, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page157">157</a></span></p> +<p>Wey, River, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page212">212</a></span></p> +<p>Weyhill, “Weydon Priors,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page23">23</a></span>–25</p> +<p>Weyhill Fair, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page24">24</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page25">25</a></span></p> +<p>“Weydon Priors,” Weyhill, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page23">23</a></span>–25</p> +<p>Weymouth, “Budmouth,” <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page71">71</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page200">200</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page207">207</a></span>, <span class="imageref"><a +href="#image209">209</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page210">210</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page212">212</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page221">221</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page225">225</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page226">226</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page232">232</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page246">246</a></span></p> +<p>Whitcomb, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page65">65</a></span></p> +<p>Willapark Point, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page8">8</a></span></p> +<p>Wilts, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page2">2</a></span></p> +<p>Wimborne Minster, “Warborne,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page106">106</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page138">138</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page270">270</a></span>–276</p> +<p>Wincanton, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page39">39</a></span></p> +<p>Winchester, “Wintoncester,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page9">9</a></span>–17, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page21">21</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page148">148</a></span></p> +<p>Windsor “Castle Royal,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page2">2</a></span></p> +<p>Winterborne Came, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page65">65</a></span></p> +<p>Winterborne Monkton, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page208">208</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page210">210</a></span></p> +<p>Winterborne St. Martin, or Martinstown, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page153">153</a></span></p> +<p>Winterborne Whitchurch, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page47">47</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page48">48</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page146">146</a></span></p> +<p>Winterslow, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page16">16</a></span></p> +<p>“Winterslow Hut,” <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page27">27</a></span></p> +<p>“Wintoncester,” Winchester, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page9">9</a></span>–17, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page21">21</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page148">148</a></span></p> +<p>“Wishing Well,” Upwey, <span +class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page211">211</a></span>–213</p> +<p><i>Withered Arm</i>, <i>The</i>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page74">74</a></span></p> +<p>Wolveton House, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page168">168</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page205">205</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page207">207</a></span></p> +<p>Woodbury Hill, Bere Regis, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page138">138</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page140">140</a></span></p> +<p><i>Woodlanders</i>, <i>The</i>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page43">43</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page176">176</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page286">286</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page191">191</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page195">195</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page197">197</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page198">198</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page308">308</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page312">312</a></span></p> +<p>Woodlands, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page298">298</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page299">299</a></span></p> +<p>Woodyates Inn, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page35">35</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page36">36</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page38">38</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page40">40</a></span></p> +<p>Wool, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page38">38</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page123">123</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page126">126</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page130">130</a></span></p> +<p>Woolbridge, “Wellbridge,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page124">124</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page127">127</a></span></p> +<p>Woolbridge House, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page122">122</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page123">123</a></span>, <span class="imageref"><a +href="#image125">125</a></span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p>“<span class="smcap">Yalbury Hill</span>,” <span +class="smcap">Yellowham Hill</span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page59">59</a></span></p> +<p>Yellowham Woods, “Yalbury Great Wood,” <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page59">59</a></span>, <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page150">150</a></span></p> +<p>Yeo, River, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page176">176</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page178">178</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page186">186</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page191">191</a></span></p> +<p>Yeovil, “Ivell,” <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page169">169</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page176">176</a></span>–178</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> + +<div class="gapmediumline"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>Printed by Hazell</i>, <i>Watson +& Viney</i>, <i>Ld.</i>, <i>London and Aylesbury</i>.</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2> +<p><a name="footnote174"></a><a href="#citation174" +class="footnote">[174]</a> In text the genealogy is: Thomas +Horner of Mells <i>m.</i> 1713 Susannah, daughter of Thomas +Strangeways, of Melbury, co. Dorset, born 1690, died 1758: they +had issue Elizabeth Horner (born 1723, died 1792).</p> +<p>Elizabeth Horner <i>m.</i> 1736 Sir Stephen Fox, afterwards +1st Earl of Ilchester, etc. Born 1706, Died +1776.—DP.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HARDY COUNTRY***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 46801-h.htm or 46801-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/4/6/8/0/46801 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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