The Project Gutenberg eBook of Thomas Hardy's Dorset, by R. Thurston Hopkins.

When I am dead, my body shall go back

To the hills between the Ridgeway and the Sea—

To the Earthworks and terracing and ancient bridle-track

To the Dorset hills my heart has held in fee;

My limbs that thrived on them shall be their very own,

I shall live again in little wayside flowers;

My flesh and bones and sinew shall give life to mighty trees

And my spirit shall abide in ancient towers.

* * * * * *

When I am dead, my dust shall mix with clay,

And "puddle" some lone dew-pond on the hill,

So every Dorset lad who drinks upon his way

Will somehow lead me back to Dorset still.

Anonymous.

Dorchester deserves to be chosen as the headquarters of the earliest of a series of excursions in Dorset, not only by reason of the premier position which it holds in the country, but also on account of the multitude of interesting surroundings which claim the attention of the literary pilgrim, the antiquary and the archæologist. The town is situated on a hill which slopes on the one side to the valley of the Frome, and extends on the other in an open country, across which run the Roman roads, still used as the highways. The principal thoroughfares divide Dorchester pretty equally, the High Street intersecting it from east to west, the South Street and North Market in the opposite direction. On the south-west is the suburb of Fordington. The principal street—on the line of the Via Iceniana—ends abruptly at the fields, and on the south and west is the rampart, planted with rows of sycamore and chestnut trees as a walk.

Daniel Defoe, in his whimsical description of his pilgrimage From London to Land's End, published in 1724, gives an entertaining survey of the town at that period. He says: "Dorchester is indeed a pleasant, agreeable town to live in, and where I thought the people seemed less divided in factions and parties than in other places; for though here are divisions, and the people are not all of one mind, either as to religion or politics, yet they did not seem to separate with so much animosity as in other places. Here I saw the Church of England clergyman and the Dissenting minister or preacher drinking tea together, and conversing with civility and good neighbourhood, like Catholic Christians and men of a catholic and extensive charity. The town is populous, though not large; the streets broad; but the buildings old and low. However, there is good company, and a good deal of it; and a man that coveted a retreat in this world might as agreeably spend his time, and as well, in Dorchester as in any town I know in England.... There are abundance of good families and of very ancient lines in the neighbourhood of this town of Dorchester, as the Napiers, the Courtneys, Strangeways, Seymours, Banks, Tregonwells, Sydenhams, and many others, some of which have very great estates in the county, and in particular Colonel Strangeways (ancestor of the present Earl of Ilchester), Napier (ancestor of the present Lord Arlington) and Courtney."

As to the healthiness of Dorchester, the editors of Hutchins's second edition wrote: "The pleasant and healthy situation of this town deserves an encomium. The famous Doctor Arbuthnot, coming hither in his early days with a view to settle in it, gave as a reason for his departure that 'a physician could neither live nor die in Dorchester.'"

St Peter's Church, a venerable edifice, occupies a prominent position at the intersection of the four streets and rises in its tower to a height of ninety feet. It is a well-proportioned building, with Norman porch and some monuments, with effigies, to Lord Holles of Ifield and to two unknown Crusaders, in coats of mail, with their legs crossed.

In the north wall of the chancel is placed an altar-tomb, which is supposed to be that of the founder. A mural tablet on the south wall commemorates THOMAS HARDY, Esquire, of Melcombe Regis, who founded and endowed the Free Grammar School.

There were two brasses, now lost, one on the chancel floor, on grey stone, over the effigy of a woman kneeling, reading:

Tradition says that the church was erected by "Geoffrey Van, his wife Anne and his maid Nan." Two of the six bells are mediæval. Close to the south porch is a bronze statue of William Barnes. His learning, his writings and poems in the Dorset dialect, his kindliness to his poor and his parish made him universally beloved. The pedestal bears the simple inscription: "William Barnes. 1801-1886," and the following lines from his poem, Culverdell and the Squire:

"Zoo now I hope his kindly feace

Is gone to vind a better pleace,

But still we' vo'k a-left behind,

He'll always be a-kept in mind."

On 3rd September 1685 Judge Jeffreys opened his Bloody Assize at Dorchester. Lord Macaulay says: "By order of the Chief Justice, the court was hung with scarlet, and this innovation seemed to the multitude to indicate a bloody purpose. More than 300 prisoners were to be tried. The work seemed heavy, but Jeffreys had a contrivance for making it light. He let it be understood that the only chance of obtaining pardon or respite was to plead guilty. Twenty-nine who put themselves on their country, and were convicted, were ordered to be tied up without delay. The remaining prisoners pleaded guilty by the score. Two hundred and ninety-two received sentence of death." Thirteen were executed here on 7th September. The formidable judge's chair is preserved in the Town Hall, and visitors are shown the picturesque timber house in High Street West at which, tradition hath it, this brutal judge lodged.

Dorchester derives its name from the ancient Roman name of Durnovaria, and Thomas Hardy has transferred part of this Latinity in writing of Fordington as "Durnover" in his novels. Close to the London and South-Western Railway station, on the Weymouth Road, is a field, now a municipal pleasure ground, containing what is called Maumbury Rings—a large, oval, grassy mound, curved like a horseshoe. This great earthen ring, which it is estimated would hold 10,000 spectators, is supposed to be the work of prehistoric man, adapted by the Romans to the purposes of an amphitheatre. Extensive excavations were carried on in the amphitheatre by the British Archæological Association and the Dorset Field Club during five summers—1908, 1909, 1910, 1912 and 1913—and among many interesting finds by the archæologists' spade must be mentioned the oblong cave at the east end, probably for the confinement of beasts, prehistoric shafts in which picks of red-deer antlers, worked flints, etc., were found, sundry human skeletons interred, and a well of the Civil War period, during which the symmetrical terraces were apparently added to the original ancient banks.

A crowd of 10,000 people is said to have been gathered upon it at the execution of Mary Channing, the wife of a grocer at Dorchester, who was strangled and burnt in the arena for poisoning her husband in 1705.

The Via Iceniana or Icknield Street came out of Wiltshire by Blandford to Dorchester and strikes on towards the west by Eggerdun Hill, about ten miles from the town, where it is clearly marked.

A Roman road went from Dorchester to Ilchester, by Bradford and Stratton, so called as the Stret-tun, the village on the Roman stratum or road.

"It is impossible," writes Mr Hardy, "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 one thousand five hundred years. He was mostly found lying on his side, in an oval scoop in the chalk, like a chicken in its shell, his knees drawn up to his chest, sometimes with the remains of his spear against his arm, a fibula or brooch of bronze on his breast or forehead, an urn at his knees, a jar at his throat, a bottle at his mouth, and mystified conjecture poring down upon him from the eyes of boys and men who had turned to gaze at the familiar spectacle as they passed on."

In the excavations made when Mr Hardy's house at Max Gate was commenced graves were discovered, of which Mr Hardy wrote: "In two of them, and I believe in a third, a body lay on its right side, the knees being drawn up to the chest and the arm extended downwards, so that the hand rested against the ankles. 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."

Maiden Castle, the Mai Dun or "Hill of Strength," one of the finest old camps in England, is situated most conspicuously to the right of a Roman road (now the Weymouth highway). It may astonish the traveller by the scale of its three earthen ramparts, the innermost being sixty feet in height and a mile or more in circumference. It is about two and a quarter miles south-west from the centre of the town, and may be reached by continuing on through Cornhill, crossing the bridge over the Great Western Railway and turning to the right just beyond it. Here, where the road reaches the open, the left-hand track must be followed. On climbing to the camp the pilgrim will find that these ramparts are as steep as they are lofty, and that they are pierced by intricate entrances formed by the overlapping ends of the valla and additionally strengthened by outworks. The view is commanding, but not remarkable for beauty, the principal features being the Roman roads diverging from Dorchester and the innumerable barrows which dot the hills near the sea. Opinions differ as to the origin of this remarkable hill fortress, but the weight of authority is in favour of its construction by the Britons and its subsequent occupation as a summer camp by the Roman troops stationed at Dorchester.

The visitor will be interested in the old inns of Dorchester. In High Street East stands, just as described in The Mayor of Casterbridge, that fine and most comfortable of country hotels—the King's Arms. From a doorway on the opposite side of the street Susan and Elizabeth-Jane, amid the crowd, witnessed the dinner given to the mayor. Through the archway of this inn Boldwood carried Bathsheba, fainting at the news of her husband's death. From the diary of a landowner of the neighbourhood (Mr Richards, of Warmwell), written more than a hundred and fifty years ago, we find that the King's Arms and Antelope were Dorchester inns in his days, as he writes that on Saturday, 13th October 1697, he "agreed w^th Captⁿ Sidenham, at the Antelope in Dorchest^r, for 100 great bushells of his choice oats, at 6s. 8d. p^r sack," and at other times dined and transacted other business there; and at the King's Arms bought "choice early pease for seed at 3s. 6d. per bushell."

At the Antelope Hotel, which is in South Street, Lucetta, passing through the town on her way to Budmouth (Weymouth), appoints to meet Henchard, but is not on the coach she mentioned. The White Hart Tavern stands at the east entrance to the town, close to the bridge. Here Troy lay in hiding, planning his surprise return to Bathsheba; we also encounter this inn again in The Withered Arm. Gertrude Lodge came here on her fatal visit to Casterbridge gaol.

On the opposite side of the road to the King's Arms the pilgrim may still take his ale at the Phœnix, the scene of Janny's last dance in Wessex Poems. In The Mayor of Casterbridge Hardy mentions a low inn in Mixen Lane (Mill Lane, Dorchester) frequented by all sorts of bad characters. In early editions it is called "St Peter's Finger," and it would seem that the author borrowed this curious name from a genuine inn sign at Lychett Minster. The real inn was called the King's Head, which has now been pulled down.

The Grammar School is in South Street, an Elizabethan foundation, built in 1569, endowed with a small farm at Frome Vauchurch, and some houses in the town, by Thomas Hardy, Esq., of Melcombe Regis. Additions were made to it in 1618, on ground given by Sir Robert Napper.

Close to the school are Napier's Almshouses, called Napper's Mite, founded in 1616 by Sir Robert Napier for ten poor men, who have a weekly dole and a small section of garden ground. The front, which opens into a small cloister, bears a clock, on a large stone ogee-corbelled bracket, a model of one that bears the sign of the old George, or Pilgrim's, Inn at Glastonbury.

The Hangman's Cottage, mentioned in the story of The Withered Arm, is still extant. It is a small grey cottage in the meadows by the Frome, opposite the gaol. It is one of a cluster of cottages built of flint and chalk, faced with red brick and strengthened with iron ties.

The Bull Stake and the gaol, both of which figure in the novels, are in North Square, near St Peter's and the Corn Exchange. Approaching the Frome, we pass close to the Friary Mill (the old mill of the suppressed Franciscan Priory), near which was Jopp's cottage, to which Henchard retired after his bankruptcy. "Trees, which seemed old enough to have been planted by the friars, still stood around, and the back hatch of the original mill yet formed a cascade which had raised its terrific roar for centuries. The cottage itself was built of old stones from the long dismantled Priory, scraps of tracery, moulded window-jambs and arch-labels being mixed in with the rubble of the walls." The remains of the Priory ruins were used up as building material and no trace is left. The prison was largely built from its remains, while in its turn it is said to have been erected from the ruins of a castle built by the Chidiocks.

In South Street we shall find the High Place Hall, which was Lucetta's house. It stands at the corner of Durngate Street, but the façade has been modernised and the lower portion has been converted into business premises. The depressing mask which formed the Keystone of the back door was taken from Colyton House, in another part of the town. If we go to the bottom of South Street and take the turning to the left we quickly come to a quiet byway on the right near the shire hall, called Glydepath Road. On the left of this narrow thoroughfare is the early eighteenth-century mansion called Colyton House. Here will be found the long filled-in archway, with the mask as its keystone: "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 thereat had chipped off the lips and jaw as if they had been eaten away by disease." The building to which the archway belongs was formerly the county town residence of the Churchills. This is Lucetta's house as to character, though not as to situation.

Just beyond the White Hart we come to the first of the two bridges (the second, Grey's Bridge, being only a few hundred yards farther along) which have their parts in The Mayor of Casterbridge. Thomas Hardy has quaintly described these bridges and has discoursed upon the habits of their frequenters:

"Two bridges stood near the lower part of Casterbridge (Dorchester) town. The first, of weather-stained brick, was immediately at the end of High Street, where a diverging branch from that thoroughfare ran round to the low-lying Durnover lanes, so that the precincts of the bridge formed the merging-point of respectability and indigence. The second bridge, of stone, was farther out on the highway—in fact, fairly in the meadows, though still within the town boundary.... 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.

"To this pair of bridges gravitated all the failures of the town.... There was a marked difference of quality between the personages who haunted the near bridge of brick and the personages who haunted the far one of stone. Those of lowest character preferred the former, adjoining the town; they did not mind the glare of the public eye.... The miserables who would pause on the remoter bridge were of a politer stamp."

Dorchester has now lost its fame for brewing beer. But about 1725 the ale of this town acquired a very great name. In Byron's manuscript journal (since printed by the Chetham Society) the following entry appears:—

"May 18, 1725. I found the effect of last night drinking that foolish Dorset, which was pleasant enough, but did not at all agree with me, for it made me stupid all day."

A mighty local reputation had "Dorchester Ale," and it still commands a local influence, for this summer I was advised by the waiter of the Phœnix Hotel to try a bottle of "Grove's Stingo" made in the town. It is a potent beverage—and needs to be treated with respect, to be drunk slowly and in judicious moderation. Thomas Hardy thus describes this wonderful stuff, the "pale-hued Dorchester" in his novel, The Trumpet Major:

"In the liquor line Loveday laid in an ample barrel of Dorchester strong beer.... It was of the most beautiful colour that the eye of an artist in beer could desire; full in body, yet brisk as a volcano; piquant, yet without a twang; luminous as an autumn sunset; free from streakiness of taste; but, finally, rather heady."

Francis Fawkes, in his song of the Brown Jug (1720-1777), mentions the "Dorchester Butt," and perhaps the Dorset reader, with, it may be, some tender memories of his own, will fancifully identify "sweet Nan of the Vale" with another maid down Blackmore Vale way.

"Dear Tom, this brown jug that now foams with mild ale

(In which I will drink to sweet Nan of the Vale),

Was once Toby Fillpot, a thirsty old soul

As e'er drank a bottle or fathom'd a bowl;

In boosing about 'twas his praise to excel,

And among jolly topers he bore off the bell.

It chanced as in dog-days he sat at his ease

In his flow'r-woven arbour as gay as you please,

With a friend and a pipe puffing sorrows away,

And with honest old stingo was soaking his clay,

His breath-doors of life on a sudden were shut,

And he died full as big as a Dorchester butt.

His body, when long in the ground it had lain,

And time into clay had resolved it again,

A potter found out in its covert so snug,

And with part of fat Toby he form'd this brown jug:

Now sacred to friendship and mirth and mild ale,—

So here's to my lovely sweet Nan of the Vale!"

Far from the Madding Crowd is a novel concerned with Dorchester and the immediate neighbourhood, most of the incidents happening in "Weatherbury" (Puddletown) and "Casterbridge" (Dorchester). On market day at Dorchester one still meets prosperous farmers, stiffly dressed children, lean, tanned, rough-necked labourers caged in their Sunday clothes and stout horse-dealers in grey gaiters and black hats, and it is not difficult to conjure up a picture of the hiring fair mentioned by Hardy, where Gabriel Oak appeared in search of a situation as bailiff. It will be recalled that Bathsheba was in the habit of attending the Casterbridge market to sell her corn, and here she met William Boldwood, who attracted her attention on account of his indifference to her. Bathsheba comes vividly before us with her "debut in the Forum" in the place of her uncle. We can picture her with her beautiful black hair and soft, misty eyes attracting considerable attention as she displayed her sample bags, "adopting the professional pour into the hand, holding up the grains in her narrow palm for inspection in perfect Casterbridge manner." There was "an elasticity in her firmness that removed it from obstinacy," and "a naïveté in her cheapening which saved it from meanness." In a "Casterbridge shop Bathsheba bought the valentine which she sent anonymously to Boldwood to tease him. It was this fatal valentine that drew his attention to Bathsheba, and caused him to fall strongly in love with her, and in the end to shoot Sergeant Troy dead. After this deed Boldwood travelled over Mellstock Hill and Durnover Moor (Fordington Moor) into Casterbridge, and turning into "Bull-Stake Square," halted before an archway of heavy stonework which was closed by an iron-studded pair of doors," and gave himself up for murder.

The White Hart Tavern at "Casterbridge" serves to call to the reader's mind the reappearance of Sergeant Troy, in propria persona, after playing the part of Turpin in a circus at Greenhill Fair.

Yellowham Wood, "Yallam" Wood locally, and the "Yalbury Wood" of Far from the Madding Crowd, is about three miles from Dorchester on the road to Puddletown. In a keeper's cottage here dwelt sweet Fancy Day, and here it was, as told in another novel, that Joseph Poorgrass had the experience the recounting of which used to put that most bashful of men to the blush. "Once he had been working late at Yalbury Bottom, and had had a drop of drink, and lost his way as he was coming home along through Yalbury Wood.... And as he was coming along in the middle of the night, much afeared, and not able to find his way out of the trees nohow, a' cried out, 'Man-a-lost! Man-a-lost!' An owl in a tree happened to be crying 'Whoo-whoo whoo!' as owls do, you know, Shepherd, and Joseph, all in a tremble, said, 'Joseph Poorgrass, of Weatherbury, sir!' 'No, no, now, that's too much,' said the timid man.... 'I didn't say sir.... I never said sir to the bird, knowing very well that no man of a gentleman's rank would be hollerin' there at that time o' night. "Joseph Poorgrass, of Weatherbury," that's every word I said, and I shouldn't ha' said that if't hadn't been for keeper Day's metheglin.'"

Here, as in many other passages, Hardy shows his minute knowledge of nature. He appears to know every sight and sound of animal and bird life, at all seasons of the year. Some readers have perhaps, as they walked in the woods just before the thrushes and blackbirds have finished their evensong, heard the note of the brown owl—a long and somewhat tremulous "Whoo-oo." It is a very musical note, and it does not at all resemble Shakespeare's "To-whit, tu-whoo," which so many other writers have copied. Long may the brown owl live to chant his dim song in "Yallam" Wood—and long may he escape the gun and trap of the gamekeeper! For, of all the cursed and vile things in this world, there is nothing that is worse than the trap that snares some beautiful wild thing and keeps it prisoner for long hours in patient suffering, unrelieved of any hope but of being torn from the cruel teeth and dashed to death against a wall. Yet thousands of owls have been destroyed for the sake of a few pheasants in the coverts, and after all the mischief done by hawks and owls has been greatly exaggerated—it is part of the hereditary ignorance of the rustic. Perhaps if we are in ferny glades of Yellowham Woods "when light on dark is growing" we may hear that curious sound which has been compared to the quacking of a duck with a sore throat, and after it a sniffing sound not unlike a dog might make while scratching at a rat-hole. This is a hedgehog taking his constitutional. The witch in Macbeth says, "Thrice the hedgepig whines," but as my acquaintance with "hedgepigs" goes, their conversation is limited to a "quack" and a "snuff."

Fordington is a large suburb adjoining Dorchester. The Church of St George is a fine old edifice, with a tall battlemented tower which is a landmark for those approaching the town by road. Within is a stone pulpit dated "1592, E.R." Over the top of a doorway of the south porch there is a carving of great antiquity representing a vision of St George at the battle of Antioch. The saint, mounted, has thrust his spear into the mouth of a Saracen soldier with great force and unerring aim. He looks very bored and might be saying: "This is very tame sport to one who is accustomed to slaying dragons." No doubt the semi-prone Saracen, who is trying to pull the spear out of his mouth, feels very bored too!

Away to the east of Fordington is the little village of Stinsford, which is reached by leaving Dorchester by the road leading east to Puddletown and bearing to the right soon after leaving the town. This is the "Mellstock" of the idyllic tale, Under the Greenwood Tree. In the churchyard of the ivy-covered church there are tombstones of members of the Hardy family, and on the face of the tower there is a bas-relief of St Michael. The parish school is one in which Fancy Day is introduced as the new teacher at Mellstock in Under the Greenwood Tree. "The Fiddler of the Reels," Mop Ollamore, whose diabolical skill with the fiddle produced a "moving effect" on people's souls, lived in one of the thatched cottages of this village.

To the south of Dorchester are the Winterborne villages, all places of rural content, in the shallow valley of a stream which only becomes visible in the winter. The church of Winterborne Steepleton possesses an ancient stone steeple. In the porch—a cool grey place on the hottest day—there are stone seats and flagstones of hoary antiquity, and on the outer wall is an angel carved in stone which is said to date from before the Conquest. The most interesting of the Winterbornes is Came. Barnes, the Dorset poet, was rector here for the last twenty-five years of his life. The church is a thirteenth-century building, hidden in a hollow among flowers, winding paths, outbuildings and cottages of an unattractive mansion. Barnes is buried beneath a simple cross in the churchyard. Herringtone adjoins Came, and its chief feature is the old manor-house, the seat of the Herring family, and, since James I.'s reign, of the Williamses. Winterborne Monkton and Winterborne St Martin are both contiguous to Maiden Castle. The old church of the former has been much restored; that of the latter contains a Norman font and some old stone shafts near the altar.

The pilgrim who shall elect to reach Abbotsbury will find a road, which forks by a picturesque old pond, about half-an-hour's walk towards Winterborne Abbas.

It will be noticed in some of Hardy's novels that the name of a village or town will often crop up in the name of a character, as, for instance, Jude Fawley living in Marygreen, which may be identified with the village of Fawley Magna, in Berkshire; and the name of the schoolmaster of Leddenton, really the village of Gillingham, near Shaftesbury, is Gillingham. It was at Fawley Magna church that Phillotson and Sue were married after she had parted from Jude: "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. The site whereon so long had stood the ancient temple to the Christian divinities was not even recorded on the green and level grass-plot that had immemorially been the churchyard, the obliterated graves being commemorated by ninepenny cast-iron crosses warranted to last five years."

The unusual way in which the town of Dorchester met in one line with the open country is picturesquely described by Hardy: "The farmer's boy could sit under the barley mow and pitch a stone into the office window of the town clerk ... the red-robed judge, when he condemned a sheep-stealer, pronounced sentence to the tune of Baa, that floated in from the remainder of the flock browsing hard by; and at executions the waiting crowd stood in a meadow immediately before the drop out of which the cows had been temporarily driven to give the spectators room."

The intermixture of town and country life is again touched upon in a sketch of Fordington: "Here wheat ricks overhung the old Roman street, and thrust their eaves against the church tower; great thatched barns with doorways as high as the gates of Solomon's Temple opened directly upon the main thoroughfare. Barns, indeed, were so numerous as to alternate with every half-dozen houses along the way. Here lived burgesses who daily walked the fallow—shepherds in an intramural squeeze."

The original manuscript of The Mayor of Casterbridge, which is described in the Dorchester Guide by Harry Pouncy (published by Longman, Cornhill Press, Dorchester), as "an example of rare beauty of penmanship and of absorbing interest, especially in regard to the alterations" is now in the Dorset County Museum. The leaves of the manuscript have been bound in book form, and Captain Acland, the Curator, informs me the binding has resulted in the edges of the paper being cut, and the top edges being gilt. Let us hope that the marginal notes have not been maimed by the binder's guillotine—that is, if any marginal notes were added. However, the "absorbingly interesting alterations" are not yet for the public gaze, and Captain Acland was immovable before my entreaties to be allowed to make notes on them.

A most interesting jaunt from Dorchester is along the Sherborne Road northward for eight miles to Cerne Abbas. The road from Dorchester bears to the left not far from the Great Western Railway and follows the River Frome. A mile along the road on the right, lying back and surrounded by trees, is Wolverton House, which figures in Hardy's Group of Noble Dames. This was formerly the seat of the knightly Trenchards, and is an interesting fifteenth-century house which has obtained a niche in history thus: "In this house John Russel, Esq., of Berwick, laid the foundation of the honours and fortunes of the illustrious family of the Duke of Bedford. Having resided some years in Spain, he was sent for by his relation, Sir Thomas Trenchard, to attend and entertain the Arch-Duke of Austria, King of Castile, who recommended him to the notice of King Henry VII., who took him into favour, and appointed him one of the Gentlemen of his Privy Chamber; and afterwards recommended him to his son Henry VIII." (Hutchins). The Russels were seated at Kingston Russel, where their old manor-house still remains. Wolverton was in later days the scene of a dread omen recorded by credulous Aubrey. The chief feature of the hall was a screen carven with the effigies of the kings of England; and "on the third of Nov., 1640, the day the Long Parliament began to sit, the sceptre fell from the figure of King Charles the First, while the family and a large company were at dinner in the parlour." No wonder, when the Trenchard of that day proved a sturdy rebel, and did yeoman service for the Parliament in the county.

The Giant, Cerne Abbas

The road continues through Charminster, a large and scattered village, and steadily ascends to Godmanston, five miles from Dorchester.

A mile beyond, the road still rising, is Nether Cerne, with a tiny church, prettily situated. Steadily climbing another two miles, we reach Cerne Abbas, an exceedingly interesting little place, surrounded by chalk hills, on the River Cerne. It derives its distinguishing name from an abbey, which was founded in memory of Edmund the Martyr, King of East Anglia, who met his death at the hands of the Danes A.D. 870. It was erected about a hundred years later and was a place of some importance. Canute plundered the church. Here Margaret of Anjou sought refuge on the day following her landing at Weymouth, when she received tidings of the defeat of her cause at the battle of Barnet, 1471. The remains consist of a gate-house, bearing the escutcheon of the abbey, and those of the Earl of Cornwall, Fitz-James and Beauford; the abbey-barn, a long, buttressed building, and some traces of the park and gardens.

The church, dedicated to St Mary, is of Perpendicular style and supposed to have been built by the abbots.

Immediately above the town rises a lofty eminence, popularly called the Giant's Hill, from an uncouth colossal figure cut on its chalky surface. It represents a man, 180 feet in height, holding in his right hand a club and stretching forth the other. "Vulgar tradition," says Britton, "makes this figure commemorate the destruction of a giant, who, having feasted on some sheep in Blackmoor, and laid himself to sleep on this hill, was pinioned down, like another Gulliver, and killed by the enraged peasants, who immediately traced his dimensions for the information of posterity." On the summit of the hill is an entrenchment called Trendle (i.e. a circle, Saxon). The Cerne giant is believed by some authorities to be of Phœnician origin and to represent Baal, but no one really knows much about him, and, it must be also added, the Dorset rustic cares very little about the matter.

CHAPTER VI A LITERARY NOTE: THOMAS HARDY AND WILLIAM BARNES

Thomas Hardy is a Dorset man both by birth and residence. He was born on 2nd June 1840, in a pretty, thatched cottage in the hamlet of Higher Bockhampton. If one takes the London road out of Dorchester, a walk of a mile and a turn to the right will lead to the village of Stinsford; passing this hamlet and keeping to the road which crosses Kingston Park, a turn to the left breaks on to Higher Bockhampton. The house stands on the edge of Thorncombe Wood, skirting Bockhampton Heath, but Hardy has told us that within the last fifty years the wood enclosed the house on every side.

Come into this old-world dwelling itself. The living-room is grey and white and dim. Ivy peers in at the open windows set deep in the thick walls. The floor is grey and shining, stone-flagged; the ceiling cross-beamed with rich old oak; the fireplace wide and deep, and the whole building covered with a fine roof of thatch. Here the earlier years of the novelist were spent, here the aroma of the earth and woods invaded his heart when it was young. The environment helped to feed the long, long thoughts of the boy and gave him the image of the beginning of man living in the woods in the darkness, outwitting the wolves. It was here in the cradle of nature that Hardy first gained his minute knowledge of nature, and learnt how life and the meaning of life must be linked with place and the meaning of place. As in old Greek drama the chorus was directed to the audience at certain stages, so does Hardy turn the place spirit upon the progress of the story at certain moments with a vital bearing upon the action. He sees, as only the artist can see, how all the world is interwoven, and how the human spirit cannot be divorced from the plain course of nature without pity and disaster. To Hardy's delicate subtlety of mind in perceiving the right values of character and environment we owe the tremendous effect of certain great scenes: the selection of Woolbridge House, the antique and dismal old home of the Turbervilles, for the scene of Tess's confession; the thunderstorm during which Oak saved his beloved Bathsheba's ricks; the mist that rolled wickedly over the cart conveying Fanny Robin's body from the workhouse, and produced the horrible drip-drip-drip on the coffin while the drivers caroused in an inn; the strange scene where Wildeve, "the Rousseau of Egdon," and the travelling ruddleman dice for Mrs Yeobright's money by the light of glow-worms. The delineation of Norcombe Hill at the commencement of Far from the Madding Crowd sets the key to which the theme of the story must always return after many delightful changes, and the vivid account of the lonely monarchy of the shepherd's night with his sheep, and the opulent silence when "the roll of the world eastward is almost a palpable movement" show the power and relentless grip of Hardy's work. Incidentally, also, with what fascinating detail does he introduce Bathsheba Everdene to the reader, so that we at once perceive what a curious blend of joyfulness, pride, astuteness and irresponsibility she would gradually develop as the years pass on—witness the little incident at the toll-gate, where, seated on the top of the loaded wagon, she refused to concede his rightful pence to the aggrieved turnpike-keeper.

Bingham's Melcombe Ten miles north-east of Dorchester A LOVELY DORSET MANOR-HOUSE

At the age of seventeen Hardy was articled to an ecclesiastical architect of Dorchester named Hicks, and it was in pursuance of this calling that he enjoyed many opportunities of studying not only architecture, but also the country folk, whose types he has been so successful in delineating. Architecture has deeply coloured all his work, from Desperate Remedies to Jude the Obscure. The former of these stories (in which, as it will be remembered, three of the characters are architects practising the miscellaneous vocations of stewards, land surveyors and the like, familiar to architects in country towns) appeared in 1871, signed only with initials. It was followed in the next year by Under the Greenwood Tree, and at this date Hardy departed from architecture (in which he had distinguished himself so far as to be a prize-winner at a Royal Society's competition). In 1873 A Pair of Blue Eyes appeared, and in 1874 Far from the Madding Crowd ran through the Cornhill. It was the first of his books to be published in yellow-backed form, which was then a sign that the novel had reached the highest point of popularity.

His first novel, The Poor Man and the Lady, was never published, and probably never will be, having been suppressed at Hardy's own request, although accepted for publication on the advice of George Meredith. But it was not long before he had finished a second story, Desperate Remedies, which first saw the light through the agency of Tinsley Brothers in 1871.

His first published article appeared without signature in Chambers's Journal, on 18th March 1865, entitled, "How I Built Myself a House," and was of a semi-humorous character. But previous to this Hardy had written a considerable amount of verse, all of which, with the exception of one poem, The Fire at Tranter Sweatley's, was unfortunately destroyed. This Wessex ballad appeared, bowdlerised, in The Gentleman's Magazine in November 1875. The ballad was first reproduced in its original form at the end of Mr Lane's bibliography, together with the novelist's biographical note on his friend and neighbour, the Rev. William Barnes, the Dorset poet, contributed to The Athenæum in October 1886. Of Mr Hardy's remaining contributions to periodical literature in other directions than fiction I need, perhaps, only mention his paper on "The Dorset Labourer," published in Longmans' in July 1893.

The Trumpet Major was published in 1881, and the next novel was A Laodicean, which appeared originally in Harper's Magazine.

"The writing of this tale," says Mr Hardy in the new preface to the book, "was rendered memorable, to two persons at least, by a tedious illness of five months that laid hold of the author soon after the story was begun in a well-known magazine, during which period the narrative had to be strenuously continued by dictation to a predetermined cheerful ending. As some of these novels of Wessex life address themselves more especially to readers into whose soul the iron has entered, and whose years have less pleasure in them now than heretofore, so A Laodicean may perhaps help to wile away an idle afternoon of the comfortable ones whose lines have fallen to them in pleasant places; above all, of that large and happy section of the reading public which has not yet reached ripeness of years; those to whom marriage is the pilgrim's Eternal City, and not a milestone on the way."

Hardy's next novel, Two on a Tower, was published in three volumes in 1882. Four years elapsed before Mr Hardy's tenth novel, The Mayor of Casterbridge, made its appearance, though his story of The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid, which came out in The Graphic Summer Number in 1883, was reprinted in book form in America in 1884. The Woodlanders came next, this time through Messrs Macmillan, who published it in 1887 in three volumes. Wessex Tales, in two volumes, appeared in 1888, though the stories had been making their appearance in various periodicals since 1879.

In 1891 came Tess of the D'Urbervilles, which took the reading and criticising world by surprise. Hardy became explicit and charged the collective judgment of society with being shallow and contrary to the laws of nature. He dashed aside the conventions and proclaimed a "ruined" girl a "pure woman," and made definite charges against the code of society, which, in the belief that it was contending against immorality, was all the while destroying some of nature's finest and most sensitive material. Hardy does not preach, but there is more than a dramatic situation in Angel Clare's confession to Tess on the night of their wedding, for he shows the hopelessness of any justice coming to the "fallen" girl. Even if Tess had been faultless, all her faith, devotion, love and essential sweetness would have been given to an unjust and sinful man. The whole situation is summed up in the conversation which follows Angel Clare's confession of an "eight-and-forty hours'" dissipation. Hardy shows (and endorses) that it was quite right that Tess, with her natural, unsophisticated intelligence, should look upon her loss of virginity out of wedlock as a thing to be regretted and also a thing to be forgiven—just as the same event in Angel Clare's life:

"It cannot—oh no, it cannot." She jumped up joyfully at the hope. "No, it cannot be more serious, certainly," she cried, "because 'tis just the same!"

For life and light and movement it would be hard to surpass Chapter XXVIII. of Far from the Madding Crowd, where Sergeant Troy's skilful and dazzling exhibition with a sword bewilders Bathsheba and ends in that unpropitious, fugitive kiss.

It is a curious fact that, although Hardy's novels are such a true living influence, there are many people who feel that as a poet he has somehow just failed to hit the mark. But he himself regards his verse as the most important part of his work, and a section of his readers look upon it as the most distinctive English poetry of the past twenty years. In some quarters his poems are received with that curiosity which is awarded to a man of genius who breaks out freakishly with some strange hobby. People might look upon Rudyard Kipling with just such curiosity if he invited his friends to inspect his latest experiments in fretwork. However, to those of us who have followed his lyric poems and his supreme achievement, The Dynasts, it seems a well-nigh inexplicable phenomenon that much of his poetry should have passed into the limbo of forgotten things. Is there something wrong with his poems, or unusual about them? There is certainly a puzzling quality in his work. When his Wessex Poems were published in 1899 the reviewers, in a chorus, decided that it was "want of form" which weakened his verse, and it is interesting to read how Literature summed up his position as a poet:

"Here is no example of that positive inability to write well in verse which has marked several great prose writers, such as in Carlyle and Hume; nor of that still more curious ability to write once or twice well, and never to regain the careless rapture, as in Berkeley and Chateaubriand. The phenomenon is a strongly marked and appropriate accent of his own, composing (so to speak) professionally in verse, able to amuse and move us along lines strictly parallel with his prose, and yet lacking something. This is not a case like George Eliot's, where the essence of the writer's style evaporates in the restraint of verse. Never was Mr Hardy more intensely and exclusively himself than in 'My Cicely.' Yet is this a complete success? Much as we admire it, we cannot say that it is.