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Title: Thomas Hardy's Dorset
Author: Robert Thurston Hopkins
Illustrator: E. Harries
Release Date: August 26, 2013 [EBook #43565]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THOMAS HARDY'S DORSET ***
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THOMAS HARDY'S DORSET
_Works by the same Author_
RUDYARD KIPLING: A CHARACTER STUDY
GEORGE BORROW: LORD OF THE OPEN ROAD
WAR AND THE WEIRD
THE AMBER GIRL
KIPLING'S SUSSEX
FRIENDLY SUSSEX. (_In the Press_)
[Illustration: Birthplace of Thomas Hardy, Upper Bockhampton]
THOMAS HARDY'S DORSET
BY R. THURSTON HOPKINS
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY E. HARRIES
AND FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
NEW YORK
D APPLETON AND COMPANY
1922
FIRST EDITION 1922
COPYRIGHT
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED
EDINBURGH
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. DORSET FOLK AND DORSET WAYS 13
The Dorset Rustic a Genial Fellow--Unconscious Humour--The
Jovial Blacksmith--Cider-making--The Poetic
Tippler--Anglo-Saxon Tongue--Enigmatical Sayings and
Proverbs--A Dorset Rector and his Ale--Whiplegs--Thatch
and "Cob"--A Beautiful Tract between Seaton
and West Bay--The Devil's Own Card--Thomas Hardy's
Story of Witchcraft--Conjurer Trendle--The Piskies--The
Bibulous Farmer and the Piskies--The Cider Mill--Happy
Days at Hovey's Barn--Marc Bricks--A Game
of "Hunting"--A Dorset Vicar on Miracles--Akermann's
_Wiltshire Glossary_--William Barnes--"Dorset's good
enough for me!"--Large Farm Kitchens
II. BARFORD ST MARTIN TO TISBURY AND SHAFTESBURY 33
Tisbury--John Lockwood Kipling--The Green Dragon
at Barford St Martin--The Man who laughed gloriously--Points
of Perfection in a Greyhound--The Best Dog
that ever breathed--Shaftesbury and its Traditions--A
Curious Custom--A Story of Water-carrying Days at
Shaston--Bimport and _Jude the Obscure_--Old Grove's
Place--Marnhull--Pure Drop Inn
III. THE VALE OF BLACKMOOR 45
Fortune scowls on me--The Song of the Nightingale--A
Little Round-Faced Man--The Hauntings of Woolpit
House--The Vale of Blackmoor--White-Hart Silver--King's
Stag Inn--The Length of Life in Animals--Folk-Sayings
of Blackmoor--The Maidens of Blackmoor--Barnes
the Poet
IV. BLANDFORD TO DORCHESTER 59
Blandford--Winterborne Whitchurch--Turberville the
Poet--Milborne St Andrews--"Welland House"--Hardy's
_Two on a Tower_--Puddletown--The Story
of Farmer Dribblecombe and the Christmas Ale--The
Ancient Family of Martins--The Ape of the Martins--The
Last of the Martins--The Church of Puddletown--A
Sad Love Story--"Weatherbury Upper Farm"
V. DORCHESTER 69
Daniel Defoe's Description of Dorchester--Doctor
Arbuthnot--St Peter's Church--Thomas Hardy of
Melcombe Regis--William Barnes--Judge Jeffreys--Maumbury
Rings--Mary Channing strangled and burnt--Thomas
Hardy and Relics of Roman Occupation--Maiden
Castle--Old Inns--The Grammar School--Napper's
Mite--Hangman's Cottage--The Bull Stake--"Jopp's
Cottage"--Priory Ruins--High Place Hall--Colyton
House--The Mask with a Leer--Thomas Hardy
and the Habits of Bridge Haunters--Dorchester Ale--"Groves"
Stingo--_The Trumpet Major_--Toby Fillpot--A
Dorchester Butt--_Far from the Madding Crowd_--"Yellowham
Wood"--The Brown Owl--The Hedge Pig--Fordington--Church
of St George--Hardy's
"Mellstock"--Winterborne Villages--Original Manuscript
of _Mayor of Casterbridge_--Wolverton House--Knightly
Trenchards--Cerne Abbas and "The Giant"
VI. A LITERARY NOTE: THOMAS HARDY AND WILLIAM BARNES 98
Hardy's Grandfather--Hardy as a Poet--Primitive
Nature Worship--Prose Poem of the Cider-Maker--William
Barnes--Troublous Days--"Woak Hill"--Pathetic
Touch
VII. BERE REGIS AND THE ANCIENT FAMILY OF TURBERVILLE 122
Yellowham Hill--"The Royal Oak" at Bere Regis--My
Friend the Thatcher--The Complete Guide to Thatching--Bere
Regis Church--Humorous Norman Carvings--Sepulchre
of the Turbervilles--Outline of Hardy's _Tess_--A
Turberville Tradition--The First of the Turbervilles--Bryant's
Puddle--The Old Turberville Manor House--Descendants
of the Illegitimate Turbervilles--A Flagrant
Poacher--The Tyrant of the Tudor Inn--Hodge the
eternally efficient--Hardy's Tess and Wellbridge Manor
House--Tess's Ancestors--Smoke Pence--Superstition
and Shrewdness mingled in the Rustic--"Old Gover"--The
Story of the Turberville Coach--Bindon Abbey--Tess--A
Sinister Old Wood
VIII. ROUND AND ABOUT WEYMOUTH 147
Weymouth and Melcombe Regis--Rivalry of the Old
Boroughs--George III.--The Sands--Uncle Benjy and
Inflated Prices--Sandsfoot Castle--Weymouth Localities
in _The Trumpet Major_--_The Dynasts_--The Dorset
Rustic and Boney--The Girls of Budmouth--The "Naples
of England"--Mr Harper on the Hardy Country--Georgian
Houses--The Realest Things--Interesting
Relics--Preston--Sutton Poyntz--_The Trumpet
Major_--Overcombe Mill--To keep Dorset fair--A
Soldier Poet--Bincombe--Racy Saxon Speech--Hardy
on Wessex Words--Poxwell--Owermoigne--Lulworth
Cove--Portisham--Admiral Hardy--Abbotsbury
IX. POOLE 163
Poole Harbour--The Quay--An English Buccaneer--Brownsea--
Lytchett--"To please his Wife"--An Enjoyable Coast Ramble
X. SWANAGE AND CORFE CASTLE 168
Kingsley's Description of Swanage--Tilly Whim--Thomas
Hardy's "Knollsea"--The Quarry Folk--A
Mediæval Trades Guild--Old Dorset Family Names--Marrying
the Land--High Street at Swanage--Quaint
Houses and a Mill-Pond--St Mary's Church--Newton
Manor--Studland--The Agglestone--Langton Matravers--
Kingston--Enckworth Court--Corfe--The Greyhound
Hotel--An Elizabethan Manor-House--Corfe Church--A
Brave Good Chest--Curfew--Churchwardens and the
Degrees of Inebriation--Reward for killing a Fox--Lonely
Kingdom of an Inn--Wareham--Wild Life on the
Frome--Wareham once a Port--The "Bloody Bank"--Peter
of Pomfret--Meaning of the Name Wareham--Bishop
Cating--St Mary's Church--"Black Bear" and
"Red Lion"--Chapel of St Martin
XI. MY ADVENTURE WITH A MERRY ROGUE 191
My Sentimentalism over old Inns, old Ale and old
Drinking Vessels--Morcombe Lake--"Dorset Knobs"--The
Lonely Singer--The Leather Black Jack--Sleeping
with Miss Green--Lyme Regis--The Curiosity Shop--"The
Spirit of the Artist and the Soul of a Rogue"--We
are all Rogues!
XII. THE DEVON AND DORSET BORDERLAND 207
Stirring Events--Duke of Monmouth--New Inn--Youth
beckons with Magic Poignancy--Smuggling Days--Buddle
River Manners--The Cobb--Granny's Teeth--Buddle
Bridge--Town Hall--Henry Fielding--Church of
St Michael--Broad Street--The Master Smith of Lyme--M'Neill
Whistler--Old Songs--Beware of Late Shooting--Axminster--George
Inn--Musbury--Colyton--Knightly
Poles--"Little Choke-Bone"--The Courtenays--A
Rare British Flower--Lambert's Castle--Charmouth--Charles
II.
XIII. RAMBLES AROUND BRIDPORT 230
Toller of the Pigs--Noble Windows--Whyford Eagle--A
Curious Tympanum--A Remarkable Oven--Rampisham--"The
Tiger's Head"--Cross-in-Hand--Alec D'Urberville--Batcombe--
Conjuring Minterne--The Conjurer of
Bygone Days--Hardy's Story, "The Withered Arm"--Minterne's
Tomb--Kipling and a Sussex "Conjurer"--Bridport--Charles
II.--Hardy's _Fellow Townsmen_--"Greyhound
Hotel"--A Lover of Horses--"Bucky
Doo"--"The Bull" and Thomas Hardy--Footpath to
West Bay--The Chesil Beach--The "Anchor Inn" at Seatown
XIV. ROUND ABOUT BEAMINSTER 244
Beaminster--Lewson Hill and Pil'son Pen--Blue Vinny
Cheese--"Trinkrums" on a Church--An Eerie Story--
Netherbury--Robert Morgan and his "Feeble Hedde"
A GLOSSARY OF WEST-COUNTRY PROVINCIALISMS 249
Chosen in part from _Notes and Queries_; Akermann's
_Wiltshire Glossary_; _The Peasant Speech of Devon_, by
Sarah Hewett; Crossing's _Folk Rhymes of Devon_; _The
Saxon-English_, by W. Barnes; The Works of Thomas
Hardy; and many Sources not generally known
ILLUSTRATIONS
Birthplace of Thomas Hardy _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Stocks at Tollard Royal 34
The Green Dragon at Barford St Martin 38
The Giant, Cerne Abbas 92
Bingham's Melcombe 100
Hurdle-making at Bere Regis 126
Woolbridge House 136
Corfe Castle, 1865 160
The Famous Tillywhim Caves, 1860 170
Corfe Castle, 1860 176
The Lonely Singer 194
The River Buddle, Lyme Regis 202
The Master Smith of Lyme Regis 218
Drake Memorial at Musbury 222
THOMAS HARDY'S DORSET
CHAPTER I
DORSET FOLK AND DORSET WAYS
So to the land our hearts we give
Till the sure magic strike,
And Memory, Use, and Love make live
Us and our fields alike--
That deeper than our speech and thought
Beyond our reason's sway,
Clay of the pit whence we were wrought
Yearns to its fellow-clay.
RUDYARD KIPLING.
To the traveller who takes an interest in the place he visits, Dorset
will prove one of the most highly attractive counties in the kingdom. To
the book-lover it is a land of grand adventure, for here is the centre
of the Hardy Country, the home of the Wessex Novels. It is in Dorset
that ancient superstitions and curious old customs yet linger, and
strange beliefs from ages long ago still survive. It is good to find
that the kindly hospitality, the shrewd wisdom and dry wit, for which
the peasantry in Thomas Hardy's novels are famous, have not been
weakened by foolish folk who seek to be "up to date." Old drinks and
dishes that represent those of our forefathers, and the mellow sound of
the speech that was so dear to Raleigh and Drake, are things that are
now giving way to the new order of life, alas! but they are dying hard,
as behoves things which are immemorial and sacramental. The rustics are
perhaps not quite so witty as they are in Hardy's _The Return of the
Native_ and other novels, but they possess the robust forms and simple
manners of a fine old agricultural people, while they show their spirit
by the proverb, "I will not want when I have, nor, by Gor, when I
ha'n't, too!"
Heavy of gait, stolid of mien, and of indomitable courage, the true
Wessex man is a staunch friend and a very mild enemy. He is a genial
fellow and, like Danton, seems to find no use for hate. He knows that
all things done in _hate_ have to be done over again. Imperturbable to
the last ditch, he is rarely shaken into any exclamation of surprise or
wrath. When he is, "Dang-my-ole-wig!" "Dallee!" with a strong accent on
the "ee," or "Aw! dallybuttons!" are the kind of mild swear-words one
hears. But when he gets into the towns he forgets these strange phrases
and his dialect becomes less broad.
Heavy and stolid the Dorset rustic may be, though there is no reason to
suppose that he is slower than any other rustic, but one is inclined to
think that the "stupidity" of the countryman covers a deep, if only
half-realised, philosophy. Nevertheless we must admit that Hodge often
wins through in his slow way. There is a good deal of humour in the
Dorset rustic, but perhaps most of his wit is unconscious. That reminds
me of the story of a Dorset crier who kept the officials of the Town
Hall waiting for two hours on a certain morning. They were about to open
the proceedings without him when a boy rushed in and handed the Mayor a
message. He read the message and seemed deeply affected. Then he
announced:
"I have just received a message from our crier, saying, 'Wife's mother
passed away last night. Will not be able to cry to-day.'"
That story may be a very ancient "chestnut," but here is a true instance
of Hodge's unconscious humour. The wife of a blacksmith at an isolated
forge in Dorset had died rather suddenly, and it happened that during
one of my rambles I applied to the forge for food and lodging for the
night. The old fellow opened the door to me, and I guessed that he was
in trouble by the fresh crape band round his soft felt hat, which is
weekday mourning of the rustic. However, the old fellow was quite
pleased to have me for company, and I stayed at his forge for some days.
"Her was a clever woman; her kept my things straight," he said to me
one night at supper, as he looked wistfully at his old jacket full of
simple rents from hedgerow briars. "But it's no manner of use
grumbling--I never was a _bull-sowerlugs_ [a morose fellow]. And thank
the Lord she was took quick. I went off for the doctor four miles away,
and when I gets there he was gone off somewhere else; so I turned, and
in tramping back along remembered I had a bottle of medicine which he
did give me last year, so says I, 'That will do for the ol' woman'; so I
gave it to her and she died."
The old blacksmith drank his beer and dealt with his ham and bread for
ten minutes in silence. Then he looked into the amber depths of his ale
and said: "_Say, mister--wasn't it a good job I didn't take that bottle
of physic myself?_"
Dorset is only one of the several cider-making counties in Wessex. The
good round cider is a warming and invigorating drink that is in every
way equal to a good ale, and sometimes--especially if it has been
doctored with a little spirit and kept in a spirit cask--is considerably
stronger, and is by no means to be consumed regardless of quantity. And
one must be cautious in mixing drinks when taking cider. But the cider
which is consumed by the Dorset rustic is, to use a local word, rather
"ramy" or "ropy" to the palate of a person unaccustomed to it. That is
to say that it is sour and often rather thick. Of course the rustic
knows nothing, and would care nothing, for the so-called cider sold in
London which resembles champagne in the way it sparkles. Such stuff is
only manufactured for folk out of Wessex.
A Dorset rustic, on being reproved by a magistrate for being drunk and
disorderly, explained that his sad plight was the result of taking his
liquor the wrong way up; for, said he,
"Cyder upon beer is very good cheer,
Beer 'pon cyder is a dalled bad rider!"
The worthy magistrate, not to be vanquished by the poetic tippler, told
him to remember--
"When the cyder's in the can
The sense is in the man!
When the cyder's in the man
The sense is in the can."
"I wish," said an old shepherd to me, with regret in his voice, "that
you might taste such beer as my mother brewed when I was a boy. Bread,
cheese and ingyens [onions] with a drop of beer was parfuse [ample] for
a meal in those days, 'ess fay! But this beer they sell now is drefful
wishee-washee stuff. I'll be dalled if I'll drink it; 'tez water
bewitched and malt begridged [begrudged]." In Hodge's uncouth speech are
found many words and usages of the Anglo-Saxon tongue, though it is not
now relished by fastidious palates. William Barnes, the Dorset poet,
enumerates the chief peculiarities of the Dorset dialect in his books on
speech lore. He loved the odd phrases of children, and it is easy to see
why. For a child, not knowing the correct method of describing a thing
and seeking to express its meaning, will often go back to the strong old
Anglo-Saxon definitions. The child can often coin very apt phrases. As,
for instance, the Dorset child who spoke of honey as "bee-jam." Barnes
was delighted, too, with the boy "who scrope out the 'p' in 'psalm'
'cose it didn't spell nothen."
Many of the humours of Arcady have been moulded into enigmatical sayings
and metaphors which may still be heard on the lips of the Dorset rustic:
Tea with a dash of rum is called "milk from the brown cow"; the dead are
"put to bed with a shovel"; a noisy old man is a "blaze wig"; a fat and
pompous fellow is a "blow-poke"; the thoughts of the flighty girl go
a-"bell-wavering"; the gallows is the "black horse foaled by an acorn."
The Dorset rustic has devised many names for the dullard:
"billy-buttons," "billy-whiffler," "lablolly," "ninnyhammer," and
"bluffle-head" are some of them. The very sound of such names suggests
folly.
"Leer" is a curious word still heard in Dorset and Devon. It is used to
express the sense of craving produced by weakness and long fasting.
Perhaps Shakespeare used _Lear_ in a metaphorical sense. I remember once
hearing a Sussex labourer speak of taking his "coager" (cold cheer?), a
meal of cold victuals taken at noon, but I am told the mouthful of bread
and cheese taken at starting in the morning by the Dorset rustic
rejoices in the still more delightful name of "dew-bit."
"Crowder" (a fiddler) is a genuine British word, used up to a few years
ago, but I was unable to trace anyone using it in Dorset this year. In
Cornwall the proverb, "If I can't crowdy, they won't dance" (meaning,
"They will pass me by when I have no money to feast and entertain my
friends"), was commonly quoted fifty years ago.
Another tale regarding unconscious humour is told of by a Dorset rector
who was holding a Confirmation class. He was one of the old-fashioned
parsons and made it his solemn duty to call at the village inn and drink
a pint of ale with his flock every evening. One of the candidates for
Confirmation was the buxom daughter of the innkeeper, and when he came
to ask her the usual fixed question, "What is your name?" the girl,
holding her head on one side, glanced at him roguishly, and said:
"Now dawntee tell me you don't know. As if you diddent come into our
place every night and say, 'Now, Rubina, my dear, give me a half-pint of
your best ale in a pint pewter!'"
The story of village sports and the way in which the rustic was wont to
enjoy himself is always interesting. One of the most singular forms of
contest once in common practice in the west of England was _whiplegs_.
The procedure of this pastime consisted of the men standing a yard or so
apart and lashing each other's legs with long cart whips till one cried
"Holt!" The one who begged for quarter of course paid for the ale. The
rude leather gaiters worn by tranters or carters fifty years ago would,
of course, take much of the sting out of the whip cuts.
Thatch survives in nearly every village, and one of the favoured
building materials is stone from the Dorset quarries. At Corfe the
houses are built of stone from foundation to roof, and stone slabs of
immense size are made to take the place of tiles and slates. We find
"cob" cottages here and there, and this perhaps is the most ancient of
all materials, being a mixture of clay or mud and chopped straw. It is
piled into walls of immense thickness and strength, and then plastered
and white-washed. The natives in Egypt and Palestine construct their
village homes with the same materials, and the result is not only
wonderfully picturesque, but satisfactory in the more important respect
of utility. But now the Dorset people seldom build their walls of "cob"
as of yore, and yet such work is very enduring. As an old Devonshire
proverb has it: "Good cob, a good hat, and a good heart last for ever."
* * * * *
The beautiful tract of coast-line between Seaton on the west and West
Bay on the east is a region of great charm; for here will be found all
the most pleasing features of the sister counties, Dorset and Devon. The
gracious greenery and combes of Devon trespass over the border at Lyme
Regis and so bestow on this nook the wooded charm of the true West
Country, which is lacking on the chalky grass hills of other parts of
Dorset. If the coast is followed from Lyme Regis we soon thread our way
into the wild tangles of Devon. Things have changed somewhat in these
days, but still the true son of Devon carries his country with him
wherever he goes; he does not forget that every little boy and girl born
in the West is breathed over by the "piskies." But modern education has
just about killed the "piskies," and there are no more ghosts in the old
churchyards. There is a reason for the non-appearance of spirits at the
present day. They have ceased to come out of their graves, said an old
rustic, "ever since there was some alteration made in the burial
service." A firm belief in "_the very old 'un_" is still, however, a
most distinctive article of the rustic creed. "There was never a good
hand at cards if the four of clubs was in it," said a rooted son of the
soil to me. "Why?" I asked. "Because it's an unlucky card; it's the
devil's own card." "In what way?" I urged. "It's the _old 'un's_
four-post bedstead," was the reply.
Another rustic remarked in all seriousness that he did think wizards
"ought to be encouraged, for they could tell a man many things he didn't
know as would be useful to 'un." The belief in witchcraft is almost
dead, but it is not so many years ago that it was firmly held. Thomas
Hardy's tale, _The Withered Arm_, it will be recalled, is a story of
witchcraft. Farmer Lodge brought home a young wife, Gertrude. A woman
who worked on Lodge's farm, Rhoda Brook by name, had a son of which the
farmer was the father. Rhoda naturally resented the marriage, and had a
remarkable dream in which Gertrude, wrinkled and old, had sat on her
chest and mocked her. She seized the apparition by the left arm and
hurled it away from her. So life-like was the phantom of her brain that
it was difficult for her to believe that she had not actually struggled
with Gertrude Lodge in the flesh. Some time afterwards the farmer's wife
complained that her left arm pained her, and the doctors were unable to
give her any relief. In the end someone suggested that she had been
"overlooked," and that it was the result of a witch's evil influence.
She was told to ask the advice of a wise man named Conjurer Trendle who
lived on Egdon Heath. In the days of our forefathers the conjurer was an
important character in the village. He was resorted to by despairing
lovers; he helped those who were under the evil eye to throw off the
curse, and disclosed the whereabouts of stolen goods. His answers, too,
were given with a somewhat mystic ambiguity. "Own horn eat own corn"
would be the kind of reply a person would receive on consulting him
about the disappearance of, say, a few little household articles. Well,
to continue the story, Rhoda Brook accompanied Gertrude to the hut of
Conjurer Trendle, who informed the farmer's wife that Rhoda had
"overlooked" her. Trendle told her that the evil spell might be
dissolved and a cure effected by laying the diseased arm on the neck of
a newly hanged man. During the absence of her husband she arranged with
the Casterbridge hangman to try this remedy. On the appointed day she
arrived at the gaol, and the hangman placed her hand upon the neck of
the body after the execution, and she drew away half fainting with the
shock. As she turned she saw her husband and Rhoda Brook. The dead man
was their son, who had been hanged for stealing sheep, and they harshly
accused her of coming to gloat over their misfortune. At this the
farmer's wife entirely collapsed, and only lived for a week or so after.
Thomas Q. Couch, writing in _Notes and Queries_, 26th May 1855, gives a
pleasant and light-hearted article on the prevailing belief in the
existence of the piskies in the West Country:
"Our piskies are little beings standing midway between the purely
spiritual, and the material, suffering a few at least of the ills
incident to humanity. They have the power of making themselves seen,
heard, and felt. They interest themselves in man's affairs, now doing
him a good turn, and anon taking offence at a trifle, and leading him
into all manner of mischief. The rude gratitude of the husbandman is
construed into an insult, and the capricious sprites mislead him on the
first opportunity, and laugh heartily at his misadventures. They are
great enemies of sluttery, and great encouragers of good husbandry. When
not singing and dancing, their chief nightly amusement is in riding the
colts, and plaiting their manes, or tangling them with the seed-vessels
of the burdock. Of a particular field in this neighbourhood it is
reported that the farmer never puts his horses in it but he finds them
in the morning in a state of great terror, panting, and covered with
foam. Their form of government is monarchical, as frequent mention is
made of the 'king of the piskies.' We have a few stories of pisky
changelings, the only proof of whose parentage was that 'they didn't
goody' [thrive]. It would seem that fairy children of some growth are
occasionally entrusted to human care for a time, and recalled; and that
mortals are now and then kidnapped, and carried off to fairyland; such,
according to the nursery rhyme, was the end of Margery Daw:
"'See-saw, Margery Daw
Sold her bed, and lay upon straw;
She sold her straw, and lay upon hay,
Piskies came and carri'd her away.'
"A disposition to laughter is a striking trait in their character. I
have been able to gather little about the personalities of these
creatures. My old friend before mentioned used to describe them as about
the height of a span, clad in green, and having straw hats or little red
caps on their heads. Two only are known by name, and I have heard them
addressed in the following rhyme:--
"'Jack o' the lantern! Joan the wad!
Who tickled the maid and made her mad,
Light me home, the weather's bad.'
"But times have greatly changed. The old-world stories in which our
forefathers implicitly believed will not stand the light of modern
education. The pixies have been banished from the West, and since their
departure the wayward farmer can no longer plead being 'pisky-led' on
market nights.
"'Pisky-led!' exclaimed an old Devon lady to her bibulous husband, who
had returned home very late, pleading he had been led astray by the
piskies. 'Now, dawntee say nort more about it'--and with a solemn voice
and a shake of her bony finger she added: 'Pisky-led is whisky-led.
That's how it is with you!'"
* * * * *
May with its wealth of resurrecting life, its birds' songs, its flowers
uplifting glad heads, is a beautiful month in Dorset; but cider-making
time, when the trees put on a blaze of yellow and red and the spirit of
serenity and peace broods over everything, is the period that the true
son of Dorset loves best. Cider-makin' time--what a phrase! What
memories! Why, then, time does indeed blot and blur the golden days of
youth! I had almost forgotten the sweet smell of pomace and the cider
mill--things which loomed large in the days when I was a boy down Devon
way. It is middle age, which Stevenson likened to the "bear's hug of
custom squeezing the life out of a man's soul," that has robbed me of
the power to conjure up those happy days from the depths of my
consciousness. Certainly some virtue within me has departed--what? Well,
I do not know, but I cannot recapture the delirious joy of the apple
harvest in the West. It is only a memory. Perhaps it is one of those
things which will return unexpectedly, and by which I shall remember the
world at the last.
Well, then, when I was a boy, cider brewing in Hovey's barn was one of
the joys of life. A steam-engine on four wheels arrived from Exeter, and
pulleys and beltings were fixed up to work the old-fashioned press.
Within the barn a rumbling machine crushed the apples (which had been
growing mellow in the loft for a fortnight), and the press noisily
descended on the racks of pulp and sent the liquid into the tubs with a
swish like the fall of tropical rain. Outside the still October air was
broken only by the chug--chug--chug of the stationary engine and the
mellow voices and laughter of the farmers who delivered their apples and
received in exchange barrels of cider. The marc from the cider-press was
sometimes fed to cattle combined with bran, hay and chaff. But I suppose
that was an old-fashioned idea, and farmers to-day would ridicule such
a thing. But Farmer Hovey was a keen-eyed man of business--a man who
could farm his acres successfully in the face of any disaster. How I
wish that, now grown up, I could re-open those records, the book of his
memory! But it has long been closed, laid away in the tree-shaded
churchyard in Fore Street, near a flat stone commemorating John Starre:
JOHN STARRE.
Starre on Hie
Where should a Starre be
But on Hie?
Tho underneath
He now doth lie
Sleeping in Dust
Yet shall he rise
More glorious than
The Starres in skies.
1633.
Making "marc bricks" at Farmer Hovey's was the highest pinnacle of my
desire. It was one of those peculiarly "plashy" jobs in which any child
would delight. One could get thoroughly coated from head to foot with
the apple pulp in about half-an-hour. The "marc" was made into bricks
(about a pound in weight) to preserve it. It was first pressed as dry as
possible, made into cubes with wooden moulds, and stacked in an airy
place to dry. Hovey liked these bricks for fuel in the winter months,
and I remember they made a wonderfully clear fire. It was while making
up the apple pulp into bricks that my brothers and their friends caught
the idea of the game of "hunting." The apple pulp was first made up into
a score of heavy, wet balls. Having drawn lots as to who should be the
hunter, the winner would take charge of the ammunition and retire to the
barn, which was known as the "hunters' shack," while the other boys
would shin up the orchard trees, or conceal themselves behind walls,
ricks and bushes. A short start was allowed, and then the hunter sallied
forth with unrestricted powers to bombard with shot and shell anyone
within sight. The first one who made his way home to the "shack" became
the next hunter. Many a satisfying flap on the back of the neck have I
"got home" with those balls of apple pulp. It was a very primitive game,
sometimes a very painful one, and not infrequently it ended in a general
hand-to-hand fight. The game was certainly an excellent exercise in the
art of encountering the hard knocks of life with a sunny fortitude. In
1916 it was my fortune to suffer rather a sharp period of shell-fire in
Palestine with one of the players of this game. My old playmate turned
to me and yelled: "Hi, there, Bob! Look out! These coming over are _not_
made of apple pulp!"
Then the smell of the cider-press came full and strong on the night air
of the desert, and England and the West Country came back to me in the
foolishness of dreams, as the Garden of Hesperides or any other Valley
of Bliss my erring feet had trodden in heedless mood.
There is a story of a Dorset vicar who was explaining to his flock the
meaning of miracles. He saw that his hearers were dull and inattentive,
and did not seem to grasp what he was saying, so he pointed to an old
rascal of a villager who always lived riotously yet never toiled, and
said in a loud voice: "I will tell you what a miracle is. Look at old
Jan Domeny, he hasn't an apple-tree in his garden, and yet he made a
barrelful of cider this October. There's a miracle for you."
While cycling out of Swanage to Corfe--a backbreaking and tortuous
succession of hills--I had the misfortune to meet a wasp at full speed
and receive a nasty sting. I asked a little girl if her mother lived
near, as I wished to get some ammonia for it, and was delighted to hear
the child call to her mother through an open window: "Lukee, mother, a
wapsy 'ath a stinged this maister 'pon 'is feace." Which reminded me of
a story in Akerman's _Wiltshire Glossary_ of a woman who wished to show
off her lubberly boy to some old dames, and accordingly called him to
say his alphabet. She pointed to the letter "A" and asked Tommy to name
it. "Dang-my-ole-hat, I dwon't know 'un," said the child, scratching his
head. His mother passed this letter by and moved the point of her
scissors to the next letter. "What be thuck one, Tommy?" "I knows 'un by
_zite_, but I can't call 'un by's neame," replied the boy. "What is that
thing as goes buzzing about the gearden, Tommy?" The boy put his head on
one side and considered a moment, then replied, with a sly grin:
"Wapsy!"
William Barnes told a good tale of a West Country parson who preached in
the rudest vernacular. A rich and selfish dairyman of his flock died,
and in place of the customary eulogy at the graveside, he said: "Here
lies old ----. He never did no good to nobody, and nobody spake no good
o' he; put him to bed and let's prache to the living."
And here is a good story related to me by a West Country vicar. A lively
old lady in his parish was very ill, and likely, as it seemed, to die.
The vicar called on her and talked with professional eloquence of the
splendours and joys of heaven. But the bright old creature had no fears
for the future, and indeed was not so ill as they supposed. "Yes, sir,"
she said, "what you say may be very true, and heaven may be a
bobby-dazzling place; but I never was one to go a-bell-wavering--old
Dorset's good enough for me!"
Inside the old Dorset farm-houses there is much that belongs to other
days than these. Many old homes have deep porches, with stone seats on
each side, which lead to the large kitchen. It is large because it was
built in the days when the farmer had labourers to help in the fields,
and the mistress of the house had women servants to help with the
spinning and the poultry, and all who lived under the same roof had
their meals together in this room.
Many of the doors are as large and solid as church doors, and one that I
saw was studded with nails and secured by a great rough wooden bar drawn
right across it into an iron loop on the opposite side at night, and in
the day-time thrust back into a hole in the thickness of the wall. But
the majority are more homely than this and have only a latch inside
raised from outside by a leather thong, or by "tirling at the pin," as
in the old ballad.
CHAPTER II
BARFORD ST MARTIN TO TISBURY AND SHAFTESBURY
And she is very small and very green
And full of little lanes all dense with flowers
That wind along and lose themselves between
Mossed farms, and parks, and fields of quiet sheep.
And in the hamlets, where her stalwarts sleep,
Low bells chime out from old elm-hidden towers.
GEOFFREY HOWARD.
Starting from Salisbury, the pilgrim of the Hardy country, when he has
passed through Barford St Martin and Burcome, might think it worth while
to take the road to Tisbury when he arrives at Swallowcliff. The large
village of Tisbury is situated on the north side of the River Nadder, on
rising ground, and is about twelve miles west of Salisbury. There is
much of interest to be seen, and the spacious church, in the flat land
at the bottom of the hill and close to the river, is well worth a visit.
It contains several monuments to the Arundels, and on an iron bracket
near the easternmost window is a good sixteenth-century helmet, which
has been gilded in places and is ornamented with a small band of
scroll-work round the edges; there is an added spike for a crest. It is
a real helmet, not a funeral one; the rivets for the lining remain
inside. Tradition says it belonged to the first Lord Arundel of Wardour,
who died in 1639. All the seats are of oak and modern, but against the
walls is some good linen-fold panelling of the seventeenth century or
very late sixteenth century. In the sacrarium is a fine brass to
Lawrence Hyde of West Hatch. He was the great-grandfather of Queen Mary,
1689, and Queen Anne, 1702. He is represented standing in a church in
front of his six sons, facing his wife and four daughters. The
inscription is:
"Here lyeth Lawrence Hyde of West Hatch Esqr. who had issue by Anne
his wife six sons and four daughters and died in the year of the
incarnation of Our Lord God 1590. Beati qui moriuntur in domino."
The churchyard is a very large one, and the old causeway which was used
in times of flood is most picturesque. Two massive black grave slabs at
once arrest the eye. In plain, square lead lettering one reads:
JOHN LOCKWOOD KIPLING
C.I.E.
1837-1911.
ALICE MACDONALD
WIFE OF
JOHN LOCKWOOD KIPLING
1910
[Illustration: STOCKS AT TOLLARD ROYAL
(Seven miles south of Tisbury)]
The village of Tisbury existed in the seventh century, the earliest
extant spelling of the name being "Tissebiri" or "Dysseburg," and there
was a monastery over which an abbot named Wintra ruled about 647. Mr
Paley Baildon, F.S.A., who has devoted considerable time to the
investigation of the origin of place names, thinks that without doubt
Tisbury is derived from Tissa's-burgh, Tissa or Tyssa being a personal
name and owner of the estate; hence it came to be known as
Tissa's-burgh.
It was at Tisbury that Rudyard Kipling wrote some of his stories after
leaving India, and there can be little doubt that after some years of
absence in the East the return to things desperately dear and familiar
and intimate exercised a strong effect upon his thoughts and writing,
and prepared a way for his delicately fashioned pictures of the Old
Country in _Puck of Pook's Hill_ and _Rewards and Fairies_.
At Barford St Martin I had the misfortune to burst the back tube and
tyre of my motor cycle, and that is the real reason I arrived at
Tisbury. I wheeled my machine to the Green Dragon, hoping for a lift to
a place where I could get fixed up with a new tyre. A large wagon was
standing outside the inn, and as it bore the name, Stephen Weekes,
Tisbury, upon it, I penetrated to the bar-parlour, thinking that I
might induce the driver to take me with the machine into that village.
The owner of the wagon was sitting inside with two large bottles of
stout before him. He was a burly fellow in shirt-sleeves and a broad
straw hat. I saw he was fifty or thereabouts--not a mere wagoner, but a
small farmer who would have answered to the description of Farmer Oak by
Thomas Hardy in his opening to _Far from the Madding Crowd_. He was of a
more jovial type than most Dorset men I have met, and after submitting
to his fire of questions I asked him gently, in jest, if he would
require any assistance with his two bottles.
"Aye," he answered, quizzing at me with his merry eyes. "I shall require
another bottle to assist me, I think."
He looked at me a moment with seriousness and then he laughed to the
point of holding his sides. He slapped his knees, shouted, roared and
almost rolled with merriment. I looked at the farmer, not without a
feeling of admiration. It was perhaps a very poor jest, you will say.
But how well a simple jest became the fellow; how gloriously he laughed.
Down in my heart I knew that no man could laugh as he did and at the
same time possess a mean mind. He was as broad as the earth, and his
laughter was just as limitless. Talk of good things: there may be
something finer than a hearty laugh--there may be--perhaps....
At this moment he called for two glasses, and explained to the landlord
that now he would drink out of a glass, seeing that he was in company.
"Then tell me," I said, "why do you drink out of the bottle when you are
alone?"
"Why, you don't get no virtue out of the beer 'thout you drink it out of
the bottle. No, fay! Half of the strength is gone like winky when you
pour it into a glass."
"I believe you are right," I said, "and I especially commend you for
drinking beer. Ale is a great and generous creature; it contains all
health, induces sleep o' nights, titillates the digestion and imparts
freshness to the palate."
"'Tis the only drink that will go with bread and cheese and pickling
cabbage," dashed in the farmer.
"'Tis a pity," I said, "that so many workers in London take bread and
cheese with tea and coffee, for there is no staying power in such a
mixture."
"It can't be good," he shouted. "It can't be healthy."
The farmer's name was Mr Weekes--the same as it was painted on the
wagon outside--and he said that he would be very glad to take me with my
machine into Tisbury, where there was a motor garage. He made an
extraordinarily shrill noise with his mouth and a fine greyhound that
had been sleeping beneath the table bounded up.
"This long-dog," said Mr Weekes, "is a wonderfully good dog--the best
dog of his kind in the world."
Mr Weekes is never half-hearted about things. His enthusiasm is
prodigious. He is like a human hurricane when he launches upon any of
his pet subjects. At once he fell to explaining the points and final
perfection of a perfect greyhound. I remember a quaint rhyme he quoted,
which is perhaps worth repetition here:
"The shape of a good greyhound is:--
A head like a snake, a neck like a drake;
A back like a beam, a belly like a bream;
A foot like a cat, a tail like a rat."
The farmer, then, I say, was not the kind of man to qualify any of his
remarks, and he reasserted his claim that, in the concrete, in the
existent state of things, his dog was the best that breathed.
[Illustration: THE GREEN DRAGON AT BARFORD ST MARTIN IN 1860
This inn is one of the few remaining places in England where the
landlord brews his own ale
The adjoining barns have been regularly used for brewing since 1750]
This he said for the sixth time, drank up his stout, and after helping
me to lift my machine into the wagon, climbed up on to his seat, I by
his side. He then flicked his horses gently with his whip and they began
to amble along with the wagon. On the way to Tisbury the farmer talked
with the greatest friendliness, and when we arrived at his farm he
insisted on bringing me in to supper. He showed me his orchard, barns
and a very fine apple-tree of which he was enormously proud, and pulled
me an armful of the finest apples he could find.
"Take these apples home," he said, watching me with his merry eyes;
"they make the best apple pies in the world."
An armful of apples of prodigious size is not exactly the kind of thing
one welcomes with a broken-down motor cycle two hundred miles from home,
but I dared not refuse them, and so I stuffed them into all my pockets.
Finally my good friend insisted on keeping me under his roof for the
night.
After my machine had been repaired next morning I went on my way,
thinking what a fine, merry, hospitable fellow the Dorset yeoman is--if
you only approach him with a little caution.
* * * * *
I left my friend the yeoman farmer with regret, regained the main road
and soon came into Shaftesbury, or _Shaston_, as it is commonly called.
This town is very curiously placed, on the narrow ridge of a chalk hill
which projects into the lower country, and rises from it with
abruptness. Hence an extensive landscape is seen through the openings
between the houses, and from commanding points the eye ranges over the
greater part of Dorset and Somerset. To add to the beauty of the
position, the scarped slope of the hill is curved on its southern side.
Shaftesbury is one of the oldest towns in the kingdom. Its traditions go
back to the time of King Lud, who, according to Holinshed, founded it
about 1000 B.C. A more moderate writer refers its origin to
Cassivellaunus. However, it is certain that Alfred, in the year 880,
founded here a nunnery, which in aftertimes became the richest in
England, and, as the shrine of St Edward the Martyr--whose body was
removed to this town from Wareham--the favourite resort of pilgrims.
Asser, who wrote the _Life of Alfred_, has described Shaftesbury as
consisting of one street in his time. In that of Edward the Confessor it
possessed three mints, sure evidence of its importance; and shortly
after the Conquest it had no less than twelve churches, besides chapels
and chantries, and a Hospital of St John.
The view from the Castle Hill at the west end of the ridge is very
extensive, and from all parts of the town you come unexpectedly upon
narrow ravines which go tumbling down to the plain below in the most
headlong fashion. The chief trouble in the olden days was the water
supply. On this elevated chalk ridge the town was obviously far removed
from the sources of spring water, and the supply of this necessary
article had been from time out of mind brought on horses' backs from the
parish of Gillingham. Hence arose a curious custom which was annually
observed here for a great number of years. On the Monday before Holy
Thursday the mayor proceeded to Enmore Green, near Motcombe, with a
large, fanciful broom, or _byzant_, as it was called, which he presented
as an acknowledgment for the water to the steward of the manor, together
with a calf's head, a pair of gloves, a gallon of ale and two penny
loaves of wheaten bread. This ceremony being concluded, the
byzant--which was usually hung with jewels and other costly
ornaments--was returned to the mayor and carried back to the town in
procession.
About 1816 the Mayor of Shaftesbury refused to carry out the custom, and
the people of Enmore were so put out by his omission in this respect
that they filled up the wells. The Shastonians paid twopence for a
horse-load of water and a halfpenny for a pail "if fetched upon the
head." I heard a rather amusing story of the water-carrying days. A
rustic who had been working on the land all day in the rain came
"slewching" up Gold Hill, feeling very unhappy and out of temper. At the
summit of the hill he passed by the crumbling church of St Peter's, but
did _not_ pass the Sun and Moon Inn. Here he cheered his drooping
spirits with a measure of old-fashioned Shaftesbury XXX stingo, and,
thus strengthened, he went on his way home, expecting to be welcomed
with a warm, savoury supper. But the news of his call at the inn had
reached his wife before he arrived home, and being rather an ill-natured
person, she decided to punish him for loitering on his way. "Oh," she
said to him, "as you are so wet already, just you take this steyan
[earthenware pot] and fill it with water at Toute Hill spring, and don't
go loafing at the Sun and Moon again." The rustic took up the pitcher
without a word, filled it and returned to his sour housewife; but
instead of putting the pitcher down, he hurled the contents over her,
saying: "Now _you_ are wet too, so you can go to the spring and fetch
the water."
Bimport is a wide and comfortable street which skirts the north crest of
Castle Hill. It is a street of honest stone houses, and readers of
_Jude the Obscure_ will look here for Phillotson's school and the
"little low drab house in which the wayward Sue wrought the wrecking of
her life." Their house, "old Grove's Place"--now called "Ox House"--is
not difficult to find. As you come up from the Town Hall and Market
House to the fork of the roads which run to Motcombe and East Stower,
Bimport turns off to the left, and a hundred or so yards down is Grove's
Place, with a projecting porch and mullioned windows. It was here that
Sue in a momentary panic jumped out of the window to avoid Phillotson.
The name of the house derives from that of a former inhabitant mentioned
in an old plan of Shaftesbury. Poor, highly strung Sue Bridehead, with
her neurotic temperament, could not throw off the oppressiveness of the
old house. "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."
The village of Marnhull is situated in the Vale of Blackmoor, six miles
from Shaftesbury. It is the "Marlott" of Hardy's novel _Tess_, the
village home of the Durbeyfield family. It contains little of interest.
The Pure Drop Inn, where "there's a very pretty brew in tap," may be the
"Crown." Here John Durbeyfield kept up Tess's wedding day "as well as he
could, and stood treat to everybody in the parish, and John's wife sung
songs till past eleven o'clock." There is a Pure Drop Inn at Wooten
Glanville and another at Wareham; one of these most probably suggested
the name. The fine church is of the eighteenth-century Gothic (1718),
and it has often been regarded by strangers as being three hundred years
earlier. The font bowl, late Norman, was unearthed in 1898, also the
rood staircase and squint and the piscina. Some ancient alabaster
effigies, ascribed to the middle of the fifteenth century and
representing a man in armour and two female figures, are placed on a
cenotaph in the north aisle. Some authorities claim that they represent
Thomas Howard, Lord Bindon, and his wives, and are of a later date. Nash
Court, a little to the north, is a fine Elizabethan mansion, formerly
the seat of the Husseys.
CHAPTER III
THE VALE OF BLACKMOOR
My motor cycle had carried me without a hitch from London to Melbury
Abbas--then Fortune scowled on me. With ridiculous ease I had rolled
along the roads all day, and I had been tempted to ride through the warm
autumnal darkness till I came to the Half Moon Inn at Shaftesbury, where
the roads fork away to Melbury Hill, Blandford and Salisbury. But a few
hundred yards out of Melbury Abbas, and then Fortune's derisive frown.
From a deceptive twist in the road I dashed into a gully, and my machine
bumped and rattled and groaned like a demon caught in a trap. It
performed other antics with which this chronicle has no concern, and
then refused to move an inch farther.
But the song of a nightingale in a grove of elms near the road made full
amends for my ill luck! It is beautiful to hear his sobbing, lulling
notes when one is alone on a dark night, and Shelley was not far wrong
in styling it voluptuous.
"I heard the raptured nightingale
Tell from yon elmy grove his tale
Of jealousy and love,
In thronging notes that seem'd to fall
As faultless and as musical
As angels' strains above.
So sweet, they cast on all things round
A spell of melody profound:
They charm'd the river in his flowing,
They stay'd the night-wind in its blowing."
I lit a pipe and made myself comfortable on the green bank of the
roadside. It was simply a matter of waiting for a carter to give me a
lift. Soon I heard footsteps approaching me. "Good-evening," said a
friendly, quavering voice, and a little, round-faced gentleman in a grey
overcoat and straw hat emerged from the shadows. I questioned him as to
the distance of the nearest inn or cottage where I could get a shelter
for the night, and explained how my machine had failed me.
"The nearest inn is two miles away. I'm afraid they do not accommodate
travellers," he replied.
"Is this your home?" I asked.
"Oh yes! Woolpit House is just beyond those elms. I live there. I am not
a native of these parts. I have only lived there for the last six
months. I am sorry I came here, for the place does not suit me. Do you
care to leave your motor cycle? You are most welcome to a bed in my
house," he added with cheerful simplicity.
"I should be greatly indebted to you. But shan't I be a bother to your
family at this time of the night?"
"I have none."
I wheeled my machine through a gate and left it the other side of the
hedge, where I hoped it would be safe till morning. We came to the house
across a footpath--a small stone-gabled sixteenth-century building. A
whisp of mist from a bubbling stream circled the place and gave it an
air of isolation. We entered a lit room, which was of solemn aspect, and
my friend gave me a deep-seated chair.
"Are you serious in saying that you do not like Dorset?" I questioned.
The little man smiled quietly, sadly.
"It is not Dorset exactly. But since I came to live here I have become a
bundle of nerves. It is nothing--I think it's nothing."
"What do you mean?"
"I only think--I only wonder----"
"Yes?"
"This is such an old house. All sorts of things must have happened here.
And from the first moment I came into the place I had a sudden
sensation of there being something unseen and unheard near me. There is
an essence in this house--an influence which stifles all laughter and
joy. I wonder if you will feel it as I do!"
"Bit creepy," I said, and at the same time I came to the conclusion that
the old fellow was a little eccentric, and this idea of the house being
on the left side of the sun was merely a foolish weakness.
"Yes, yes," he said, musing; "queer, isn't it? But you don't know the
queerest."
He pondered a moment, then suddenly he wagged his crooked fore-finger at
me and said: "It is something more than an essence--it is stronger. The
other evening when it was getting dusk I got up from my chair to light
the candles, and I saw, as I thought, someone about six yards from that
window--outside on the flagstones. It was more than a shadowy shape. So
without waiting I ran out into the hall and opened the front door,
feeling sure I should see a tramp or someone there. But the drive was
quite empty--I only looked out into the dusk. But as I looked out
something that I could not see slipped through and passed into the
house. The same kind of thing has happened a dozen times."
The little old man passed his hand over his brow.
"Here," I said rather brusquely, "you're not well; you're just a bundle
of nerves. Look here, sir, you want a holiday."
"Yes," he said, wiping his brow. "I try to tell myself that it is all
rot ... all my fancy. But what would _you_ do?"
"See a doctor," I replied.
"Doctors?... Bah! I'll tell you," he whispered. "I want a ghost-doctor
to rid me of this invisible, pushing thing. It gets stronger every time!
At first it just slipped through; just a bit more than a gust of wind.
But now it's getting compact. To-night it drove me out of the house:
that was how I came to be wandering out on the highroad like a lost
soul."
"But ... goodness, sir, such a thing outrages reason."
"You can say what you will, but _it_ is there, and it is growing
tangible. Last night I could distinguish his features as he came up
close to the window. He smiled at me, but the smile was one of
inscrutable evil. He resents me being in this house. I shall have to
abandon it."
"This little man is either off his head, or worse," I said to myself.
In spite of the warmth of the room, I felt myself shiver.
At that moment I heard the sound of a stealthy footstep outside the
door.
The little old man jumped up.
"I say," he said in an odd voice, "did you hear?"
I pretended I had not heard.
"Ah, you didn't ... and, of course, you didn't feel anything. It must
have been my imagination."
A wave of shame ran over me. I knew that I had not the courage to listen
to the old fellow's story any longer. I finished my whisky-and-soda and
stood up.
"It is very kind of you, sir, to offer me a lodging for the night. I am
feeling rather weary and would like to go to bed now, if it is
convenient to you."
"Come then, sir," he said, with his old-fashioned politeness, and he
walked towards the door.
Then I saw the _thing_. There wasn't a shadow of doubt about it. I saw
the little old man open the door. The next moment he started back. Then
he thrust forward with his body, and I could see him bearing against
something. He swayed, physically, as a man sways when he is wrestling. A
second after he was free.
"Well, you've seen it--what do you think of it?" he said presently, as I
followed him into the hall. His face had turned cloudy whitish grey.
I laughed, but the full horror of it had soaked into me.
I followed my host up a series of stairs. He carried a candlestick, with
his arm extended, so as to give me a guiding light. The old house was
dim and chilly in its barrenness. He stopped at a door in a long, narrow
corridor and set the candlestick down.
"This is your room."
With a gentle bow and a kindly smile he opened the door for me.
"Good-night, sir. Can you see your way down?" I asked.
"I have a candle in my pocket."
He lit it at mine. Another quiet, friendly smile, and I watched him out
of sight along the corridor.
I stood perfectly still for a moment just inside. Then a curious feeling
of something dreadful being close at hand was present in my mind. Of
course it was all humbug, and my nerves were deceiving me. But I could
not shake myself free from the notion that I was _not_ alone.
There is an essence in all these old dwellings that comes out to meet
one on a first visit. I recognise the truth of that--for how often have
I noticed how, under one roof, one breathes a friendly air, and under
another queerness runs across the spine like the feet of hurrying mice.
In this house there was something sinister and unwholesome. I cursed my
luck for driving me into such a place. A night spent under a hedge would
have been more desirable. However, I turned into bed and passed rather a
broken night, with stretches of dream-haunted sleep interspersed with
startled awakenings. The old house seemed to be full of muffled
movements, and once (timid fool that I was) I could have sworn that the
handle of my door turned. It was with a considerable qualm, I must
confess, I lit my candle and opened the door. But the gallery was quite
empty. I went back to bed and slept again, and when next I woke the sun
was streaming into my room, and the sense of trouble that had been with
me ever since entering the house last evening had gone.
When I arrived at the breakfast-table the little old man was seated
behind the coffee-pot, and his face was quite glowing and wreathed in
smiles. Morning had brought a flood of hard common sense to him, as
clear as the crisp sunshine that filled the room. He had already begun
and was consuming a plateful of eggs and bacon with the most prosaic and
healthy appetite.
"Slept well?" he asked.
"Moderately," I said, feeling ashamed of my timidity in the morning
light.
"I am afraid I talked rather wildly last night," remarked the little
man, in a voice pregnant with reason.
"Yes--an amazing quantity of nonsense," I consented. "Where did you
learn hypnotism?"
My host's brow clouded slightly.
"You see," I continued, "you must have thrown a spell over me, for I
really believed in your ghost story, and now I have come to the
conclusion that you were joking."
"Never mind. It doesn't matter."
But the little man didn't look up from his plate. He only shook his
head.
Well (to get on), we finished breakfast. After smoking a pipe on the
verandah with my host (who might have been a wizard for aught I knew, at
least this was my fantastic thought) I went out and looked at my
machine, and was fortunate enough after an hour's tinkering to get her
going again. The little man insisted that I should take a small glass of
some liqueur brandy of which he was very proud. So I took some of the
wonderful stuff--strong, sufficient, soul-filling, part of the good rich
earth--and went out into the sunlight, and taking a foot-bridge over
running water put myself out of the little wizard's power.
* * * * *
About six months later I was hunting in an old bookseller's shop in
Salisbury when by something more than a mere coincidence I came across a
small booklet called _Twenty-five Years of Village Life_, dealing with
the district around Shaftesbury, and I read:
"It is somewhat remarkable that, during the last ten years, two vicars
of the parish have died under somewhat mysterious circumstances at
Woolpit House. It is not necessary to go into details here, but many
wild stories about this picturesque old house are told around the
countryside. The country people have an odd way of accounting for the
ill fortune that has always attended Woolpit House. They say that it was
built by the order of a dissolute old nobleman who had sold his soul to
the devil, and in order to pass bad luck to all his successors who might
occupy the mansion he caused grave-stones from ---- churchyard to be
rooted up and built into the walls."
* * * * *
The Vale of Blackmoor or Blackmore, watered by the upper part of the
Stour, was formerly known as the White Hart Forest, but is now a strip
of pasturage celebrated among farmers as one of the richest of grazing
lands. Its marshy surface is speckled by herds of lazy cattle, and by
busier droves of pigs, of which this vale supplies to London a larger
number than either of the counties of Somerset and Devon. Blackmoor is
also known for the vigorous growth of its oaks, which thrive on the
tenacious soil. Loudon says it was originally called _White Hart Forest_
from Henry III. having here hunted a beautiful white hart and spared its
life; and Fuller gives the sequel to the tale. He says that Thomas de la
Lynd, a gentleman of fair estate, killed the white hart which Henry by
express will had reserved for his own chase, and that in consequence the
county--as accessory for not opposing him--was mulched for ever in a
fine called "White-hart Silver." "Myself," continues Fuller sorrowfully,
"hath paid a share for the sauce who never tasted the meat." Loudon also
informs us that the vale contained _Losel's Wood_, in which stood the
_Raven's Oak_ mentioned by White in his _Natural History of Selborne_.
The Vale of Blackmore stretches westward from the Melburys north of
Cattistock (Melbury Bub, Osmund and Sampford) to Melbury Abbas south of
Shaftesbury.
Down beyond Pulham, seven miles south-west of Sturminster Newton, on a
flat and dismal road, stands at the King's Stag Bridge across the River
Lidden an inn called "King's Stag," with a signboard representing a stag
with a ring round its neck, and the following lines below:--
"When Julius Cæsar reigned here,
I was then but a little deer;
When Julius Cæsar reigned king,
Upon my neck he placed this ring,
That whoso me might overtake
Should spare my life for Cæsar's sake."
The belief in the longevity of the stag prevails in most countries.
Linnæus (_Regnum Animale_) says of the _Cervus Elaphus_: "Ætas Bovis
tantum; fabula est longævitatis cervi."
From a formula, as old as the hills, relating to the length of life of
animals and trees we learn that--
"Three old dogs make one horse; three old horses make one old man; three
old men, one old red deer; three old red deer, one old oak; three old
oaks, one brent-fir [fir or pine dug out of bogs]."
If a dog be supposed to be old at eight years, this will give: horse,
24; man, 72; deer, 216; oak, 648; bog fir, or brent fir, 1944 years.
The proverbs which follow are not folk-sayings, but they are given a
place here as being quaint and curious, and not devoid of a certain
interest, as they were collected by the author while tramping in the
Vale of Blackmore during the summer of 1921:--
"When the gorse is out of blossom, kissing is out of fashion" (_i.e._
kissing is _never_ out of fashion).
"Trouble ran off him like water off a duck's back."
"If you sing before breakfast, you'll cry before night."
"Turn your money when you hear the cuckoo, and you'll have money in your
purse till the cuckoo comes again."
"Plenty of lady-birds, plenty of hops." (The _coccinella_ feeds upon the
_aphis_ that proves so destructive to the hop-plant.)
"March, search; April, try;
May will prove if you live or die."
"When your salt is damp, you will soon have rain."
"It will be a wet month when there are two full moons in it."
Certainly the maidens of Blackmore have a benediction upon them, granted
them for their homeliness and kindness. Their eyes are quiet and yet
fearless, and all the maids have something wifely about them. William
Barnes, the poet of the Dorset valley, praising the Blackmoor maidens,
says:
"Why, if a man would wive
An' thrive 'ithout a dow'r,
Then let en look en out a wife
In Blackmore by the Stour."
William Barnes was not a wild wooer, and he found joy and adventure in
a smile and a blush from a Blackmore milkmaid after having carried her
pail, and he was satisfied to know that she would have bowed when she
took it back had it not been too heavy. Perhaps--O dizzy fancy!--sweet
Nan of the Vale would not have refused a little kiss! At all events
Barnes knew womanhood in its perfection when he met with it--the maid
who was "good and true and fair" was his preference.
CHAPTER IV
BLANDFORD TO DORCHESTER
If we return, will England be
Just England still to you and me?
The place where we must earn our bread?--
We who have walked among the dead,
And watched the smile of agony,
And seen the price of Liberty,
Which we have taken carelessly
From other hands. Nay, we shall dread,
If we return,
Dread lest we hold blood-guiltily
The thing that men have died to free.
Oh, English fields shall blossom red
In all the blood that has been shed,
By men whose guardians are we,
If we return.
F. W. HARVEY.
Blandford, or, to give the town its full title, Blandford Forum, gets
its name from the ancient ford of the Stour, on a bend of which river it
is pleasingly placed in the midst of a bountiful district. It is called
"Shottsford Forum" in Hardy's _Far from the Madding Crowd_, and in _The
Woodlanders_ we are told 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." The long chief street of the town
has a bright, modern aspect, due to the great fire of 1731 which
destroyed all but forty houses in the place. There is nothing to detain
the pilgrim here, but it makes a good centre for any who are exploring
the country around it.
Five miles of rather hilly road brings us to Winterborne Whitchurch,
which has a very interesting church containing a curious old font dated
1450 and a fine old pulpit removed from Milton. The grandfather of John
and Charles Wesley was vicar here from 1658 to 1662. Of the poet George
Turberville, born here about 1530, very little is known. He was one of
the "wild" Turbervilles, and one would like to learn more about him.
Anyway, here is a specimen of his verse:
"Death is not so much to be feared as Daylie Diseases are.
What? Ist not follie to dread and stand of Death in feare
That mother is of quiet rest, and grief away does weare?
Was never none that twist have felt of cruel Death the Knife;
But other griefes and pining paines doe linger on thro life,
And oftentimes one selfsame corse with furious fits molest
When Death by one dispatch of life doth bring the soul to rest."
When we arrive at Milborne St Andrews we are within eight miles of
Dorchester. The Manor House, up a by-road and past the church of St
Andrew, is the original of "Welland House" in Hardy's _Two on a Tower_.
This was once the residence of the Mansell-Pleydell family, but since
1758 it has been used as a farm-house. The village was formerly an
important posting-place between Blandford and Dorchester, and we are
reminded of the coaching days by the effigy of a white hart on the
cornice of the post office, in time past a busy inn.
Puddletown is our next halt on the road. It is a considerable village
whose church has a chapel full of ancient monuments to the Martins of
Athelhampton. Canon Carter held the living here in 1838, and when he
first arrived the news that he neither shot, hunted nor fished disturbed
the rustic flock, and they openly expressed their contempt for him. Then
he replaced the village church band with a harmonium, and the story
gained so much bulk and robustity in travelling, as such stories do in
the country, that I have no doubt he seemed a sort of devastating
monster.
After this he did a most appalling thing: he tampered with a very
ancient rectorial gift of a mince-pie, a loaf of bread and a quart of
old ale to every individual in the parish, not even excluding the babies
in arms, and ventured to assert that the funds would be better employed
in forming a clothing club for the poor. Carter was a very worthy man,
but somehow I cannot forgive him for this. He should have placed himself
a little nearer to the full current of natural things. In the essence
the ancient gift was "clothing"--solid and straightforward. It was
surely in this spirit that Bishop John Still penned his famous drinking
song:
"No frost nor snow, no wind, I trow,
Can hurt me if I would,
I am so wrapt and throughly lapt
Of jolly good ale and old."
So at the next tithe-day supper at the Rectory a farmer who had in him
the Dorset heart and blood, a very demi-god amongst the poor of
Puddletown, arose in his place and asked the good Canon Carter if he
still held to his purpose of converting the Christmas ale into nether
garments for little boys, and the Canon replied to the effect that it
was his intention to carry out that reform.
Then the farmer, full of the West, who had not come to talk balderdash,
shouted: "I ban't agwaine tu see the poor folk put upon. I'll be blamed
ef I du." His voice was very strong and echoed in the rafters in an
alarming way, for he was of the breed that said "good-morning" to a
friend three fields away without much effort. At this point certain
stuffy people folded their hands, and called out "Fie!" and "Shame!" for
it was their purpose to curry favour with the vicar, they having many
small children in need of nether garments.
But the farmer cried out over them all (and all the other farmers
cheered him on): "I tellee what tez. I don't care a brass button for
you, with all your penny-loaf ways. That to ye all!" And with that he
snapped his fingers in the face of all the company, walked out, mounted
his powerful horse and turned back to his great, spacious farm-house.
Here he counted out a great bundle of Stuckey's Bank notes, and calling
his bailiff sent them post-haste to the landlord of the King's Arms with
word to the effect that they were lodged against a quart of Christmas
ale for every soul who should care to claim it on Christmas Eve. That is
the story of Farmer Dribblecombe, and may we all come out of a trying
position as well as he.
But to return to the church. There are the old oak pews of bygone days,
a choir gallery with the date 1635, an ancient pulpit and a curious
Norman font shaped like a drinking-bowl. The most interesting corner of
the church is the Athelhampton aisle, which is entered through a quaint
archway guarded by a tomb on which lies an armed knight carved in
alabaster. Buried here are the Martins of many generations. They once
owned the old manor-house, with the great barns behind it and the
fertile acres spreading far on every hand. They once went forth swiftly
and strongly, on hefty and determined horses, and worked hotly, and came
in wearied with long rides and adventures. Now they rest together,
"mediævally recumbent," and when their ghosts walk they do not inquire
who owns the land where they tread. They let the hot world go by, and
wait with patience the day when all the old squires of Athelhampton
shall be mustered once again. A great company indeed! The offspring of
one noble family, who, following each other for nearly four hundred
years, ruled as lords of their little holding in Dorset. The first of
the family came to Athelhampton in 1250, and the last in 1595.
Everywhere is to be found carved on their tombs the dark and menacing
motto, beneath their monkey crest, "He who looks at Martins' Ape,
Martins' Ape shall look at him!" The crest is, of course, a play on the
word Martin, which is an obsolete word for ape. But the menace of the
motto has lost its power these three hundred years, and nothing of the
might and affluence of the Martins remains but their mutilated effigies.
I have been wondering to-day how they must look out upon us all with our
cinematographs, jazzy-dances, lip-sticks, backless gowns, cigarettes,
whisky and pick-me-ups, and our immense concern over the immeasurably
trivial. I don't know that I said it aloud--such things need not be said
aloud--but as I read a touching epitaph which urged a little prayer for
two of the family, I turned almost numbly away, while my whole being
seemed to cry out: "God rest your souls, God rest your souls."
Here, since we are on the subject, is the touching prayer from the lips
of one of the ancient house of the Martins:
"Here lyeth the body of Xpofer Martyn Esquyer,
Sone and heyre unto Syr Wm: Martyn, knight,
Pray for their souls with harty desyre
That both may be sure of Eternall Lyght;
Calling to Remembrance that evoy wyhgt
Most nedys dye, and therefore lett us pray
As others for us may do Another day."
The last of the Martins was the Knight Nicholas who was buried here in
1595, and the last passage of his epitaph are the words, "Good-night,
Nicholas!" With these appropriate words they put Nicholas to rest, like
a child who had grown sleepy before it was dark. After all, we are all
children, and when the shadows lengthen and the birds get back to the
protecting eaves, we too grow tired--tired of playing with things much
too large for us--much too full of meaning.
The church of Puddletown, or "Weatherbury," brings us to the crowning
catastrophe of the sad love tale of Francis Troy and Fanny Robin, for it
is the scene of the sergeant's agony of remorse. Having set up a
tombstone over the poor girl's grave, Troy proceeds to plant the mound
beneath with flowers. "There were bundles of snowdrops, hyacinth and
crocus bulbs, violets and double daisies, which were to bloom in early
spring, and of carnations, pinks, picotees, lilies of the valley,
forget-me-not, summer's farewell, meadow saffron, and others, for the
later seasons of the year." The author minutely describes the planting
of these by Troy, with his "impassive face," on that dark night when the
rays from his lantern spread into the old yews "with a strange,
illuminating power, flickering, as it seemed, up to the black ceiling of
cloud above." He works till midnight and sleeps in the church porch; and
then comes the storm and the doings of the gargoyle. The stream of water
from the church roof spouting through the mouth of this "horrible stone
entity" rushes savagely into the new-made grave, turning the mould into
a welter of mud and washing away all the flowers so carefully planted by
Fanny's repentant lover. At the sight of the havoc, we are told, Troy
"hated himself." He stood and meditated, a miserable human derelict.
Where should he turn for sanctuary? But the words that burnt and
withered his soul could not be banished: "He that is accursed, let him
be accursed still."
The ill-named River Piddle--a rippling, tortoiseshell-coloured stream at
times--runs through the streets. An old thatched house is peculiar by
reason of the fact that it has broken out into a spacious Georgian bow
window--a "window worthy of a town hall," as Sir Frederick Treves has
remarked. It is supported by pillars, and has a porch-like space beneath
devoted to a flower-bed.
"Weatherbury Upper Farm," the home of Bathsheba, which she inherited
from her uncle, is not to be found in Puddletown, but if the pilgrim
desires to find it he must proceed up the valley of the Puddle, in the
direction of Piddlehinton. Before reaching the village he will come to
Lower Walterstone, where a fine Jacobean manor-house, bearing the date
1586, will be easily recognised as the original which Thomas Hardy made
to serve as the "Upper Farm" in _Far from the Madding Crowd_.
In the story the author has placed the farm a mile or more from its
actual position, and it is vividly portrayed:
"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 house-leek or sengreen sprouted from the eaves
of the low surrounding buildings. A gravel walk leading from the door to
the road in front was encrusted 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."
CHAPTER V
DORCHESTER
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:
"Miserere mei d's s'dum magnum mi'am tuam."
The other:
"Hic jacet Johanna de Sto. Omero, relicta Rob'bi More, qui obiit in
vigilia ste. Trinitatis sc'do Die mensis Anno D'ni MCCCCXXXVI.
Cuj'. a'ie p'piciet' D. Amen."
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
wth Captn Sidenham, at the Antelope in Dorchestr, for 100 great bushells
of his choice oats, at 6s. 8d. pr 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 Phoenix, 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
Phoenix 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.
[Illustration: The Giant, Cerne Abbas]
Lady Penelope, in Hardy's _A Group of Noble Dames_, was not an imaginary
character, but a noble dame in real life. She was a daughter of Lord
Darcy and in turn married George Trenchard, Sir John Gale and Sir
William Hervey. She is described in Hardy's story as "a lady of noble
family and extraordinary beauty. She was of the purest descent.... She
possessed no great wealth ... but was sufficiently endowed. Her beauty
was so perfect, and her manner so entrancing, that suitors seemed to
spring out of the ground wherever she went." The three suitors mentioned
above would not be repulsed, and she jestingly promised to marry all
three in turn. In the end Fate determined that her jest should fall
true. First Penelope married Sir George Trenchard, who in the course of
a few months died. A little while after she became the wife of Sir John
Gale, who treated her rather badly. Two or three years after he died and
Sir William Hervy came forward. In a short time she became Hervy's wife,
and thus her promise, which was made so lightly, became an established
fact. But the canker-worm of rumour attributed the death of Sir John
Gale to poison given him by his wife, and Sir William, believing it,
went abroad and remained there. Penelope divined the cause of his
departure, and she grieved so much that at last nothing--not even Sir
William's return--availed to save her, and she died broken-hearted. Sir
William afterwards was assured by the doctor who had examined Gale's
body that there was no ground for the cruel suspicions, and that his
death resulted from natural causes.
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 Phoenician 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.
[Illustration: Bingham's Melcombe
(_Ten miles north-east of Dorchester_)
A LOVELY DORSET MANOR-HOUSE]
The name of Hardy is very frequently encountered in Dorset, but the
novelist's family is commonly said to be of the same blood as Nelson's
Hardy. That Hardy's family possessed the sprightliness and resource of
the Dorset people there can be little doubt, and this fact is
accentuated by an anecdote concerning Hardy's grandfather, told by Mr
Alfred Pope, a member of the Dorset Field Club, at a meeting of the
society. About a century ago Mr Hardy's grandfather was crossing a
lonely heath one midnight in June when he discovered he was being
followed by two footpads. He rolled a furze faggot on to the path, sat
down on it, took off his hat, stuck two fern fronds behind his ears to
represent horns, and then pretended to read a letter, which he took from
his pocket, by the light of the glow-worms he had picked up and placed
round the brim of his hat. The men took fright and bolted on seeing him,
and a rumour soon got abroad in the neighbourhood that the devil had
been seen at midnight near Greenhill Pond.
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:
"Perhaps, although you smile, it is as serious as yours or more so."
"It can hardly be more serious, dearest."
"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.
"'And by Weatherbury Castle, and therence
Through Casterbridge bore I
To tomb her whose light, in my deeming,
Extinguished had He,'
is not quite satisfactory. Why? Simply and solely because the form is
grotesque. Here is the colour of poetry but not its sound, its essence
but not its shape.
"It might seem only right that in the face of a volume of verse so
violent and rugged as _Wessex Poems_ we should protest that this is not
the more excellent way of writing poetry. At the same time, every man
must preserve his individuality, if he has one to preserve, as Mr Hardy
assuredly has; and we have no reason to suppose that it is the desire of
the author of 'The Peasant's Confession' to found a school or issue a
propaganda. On the contrary, it is far more likely that he has put forth
his Wessex verses with extreme simplicity and modesty, not asking
himself in what relation they stand to other people's poetry. As a
matter of fact, the _Wessex Poems_ will probably enjoy a double fate.
They will supply to lovers of emotional narrative verse several poetic
tales which they will lay up in memory among their treasures; and in
time to come professors of literary history, when observing the
retrogression of an imaginative period, and when speaking of Lydgate, of
Donne, of the Spasmodists here, of the Symbolists in France, will
mention Mr Hardy also as a signal example of the temporary success of a
violent protest against the cultivation of form in verse."
But critics of discrimination are now beginning to discover that Thomas
Hardy's poems do not lack the qualities which give poetic form a true
balance. He fails to achieve popularity as a poet, they argue, because
the "concentrated and unpalatable expression of his philosophy proves
too disagreeable to those who seek relief from life in literature," and
because the first shock of the grinding harshness of his peculiar style
"is a barrier against the recognition of his merits." Certainly he makes
no direct appeal to the ear of the reader. But on reading his lyric
poems a second time--some of which, it must be admitted, must assuredly
offend those who have unbounded faith in the human soul, whether from
the standpoint of the Church or otherwise--the first grotesqueness of
effect wears off, leaving at times a clear-cut and bitter touch that it
would seem impossible to improve upon. It is true we find among the
youthful poems some of great gloom and sadness, but it is well to bear
in mind when making an estimate of Hardy's work and personality that
certain natures express their thoughts in unusual ways. It is all the
time wrong to assume that Hardy does not perceive anything else in life
but a bitter and hopeless procession, just because his eloquence is
always keener upon perceiving tragedy. It is true, he himself has
confessed, that he shares with Sophocles the conviction that "not to be
born is best"; but at the same time the spirit which moves always under
the surface of his poetry tells us that man, being born, must make the
best of life, and _especially_ do what he can to ease the burdens of
his fellow-men. After his moments of depression he finds his own
consolations. He takes a great pleasure in the trivial little objects
and customs of rustic life--those simple things that are best of all,
and his poem _Afterwards_ is a good example both of his measured and
harmonious style, and of his "dark, unconscious instinct of primitive
nature-worship":
"If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm,
When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn,
One may say, 'He strove that such innocent creatures should come
to no harm,
But he could do little for them; and now he is gone.'
If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at
the door,
Watching the full-starred heavens that Winter sees,
Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no more,
'He was one who had an eye for such mysteries'?"
The reader instinctively pictures Hardy as a morose, grim, cynical
man--but he is really anything but that. From all accounts Hardy is
mirrored in the whimsical and deep mirth that is so intermixed in the
rustic characters in his novels. "It is too often assumed," says the
capricious and tiresome Ethelberta--April-natured Hardy would call
her--"that a person's fancy is a person's real mind.... Some of the
lightest of rhymes were composed between the deepest fits of dismals I
have known."
Some years ago _The English Illustrated Magazine_ printed an account of
a visit paid by a cyclist to Hardy at his Dorchester home. Authentic
pictures of Hardy are so scarce that I venture to draw on this
interview:
"The picture he presented was, for the moment at least, all-satisfying;
there was more than nervousness in the strangely harassed-looking face,
with the most sensitive features that I had ever seen. The deep-set eyes
were troubled, but there was no mistaking their fearless courage. I knew
that I was looking at a man whose soul was more ravaged than ever his
careworn features were with the riddle of life and the tragedy of it,
and yet a soul utterly self-reliant, for all the shyness of the outward
man.
"I attempted no compliments, and asked him instead why he was so
pessimistic a writer, why he wrote at once the most beautiful and the
most dreadful of stories, and why he had not shown us far more often
than he has done a picture of requited love, or of requited love that
was not victimised at once by some pitiless act of fate.
"Mr Hardy had not sat down himself, but had stood by the fireplace,
with his white hands holding the lapels of his old-fashioned tweed coat.
"We were on better terms in a moment, as Mr Hardy replied, his voice
curiously halting, but not as if he was in any doubt of his sentiments.
It seemed a mixture of irony and diffidence.
"'You are a young man,' he said. 'The cruelty of fate becomes apparent
to people as they grow older. At first one may perhaps escape contact
with it, but if one lives long enough one realises that happiness is
very ephemeral.'
"'But is not optimism a useful and sane philosophy?' I asked him.
"There's too much sham optimism, humbugging and even cruel optimism,' Mr
Hardy retorted. 'Sham optimism is really a more heartless doctrine to
preach than even an exaggerated pessimism--the latter leaves one at
least on the safe side. There is too much sentiment in most fiction. It
is necessary for somebody to write a little mercilessly, although, of
course, it's painful to have to do it.'"
That is what we must do if we wish to move on the higher ideal of
philosophical speculation as Hardy explains it. He points out that there
is something in a novel that should transcend pessimism, meliorism or
optimism, and that is the search for truth:
"So that to say one view is worse than other views without proving it
erroneous implies the possibility of a false view being better or more
expedient than a true view; and no pragmatic proppings can make that
_idolum specus_ stand on its feet, for it postulates a prescience denied
to humanity."
Charges of pessimism Hardy dismisses as the product of the
chubble-headed people who only desire to pair all the couples off at the
end of a novel and leave them with a plentiful supply of "simply
exquisite" babies, hard cash and supreme contentment.
As I have hinted before, the face and the wealth of the earth are a
constant joy to Hardy, and he has great admiration for the Dorset
rustics--those sprack-witted, earthy philosophers who have won support
for his novels even in circles where his ideals of life are not in
favour. He enthusiastically follows the ways and works of nature in
which man co-operates. One instantly calls to mind Winterborne, the
travelling cider-maker in _The Woodlanders_, as an instance of this: "He
looked and smelt like Autumn's very brother, his face being sunburnt to
wheat colour, his eyes blue as cornflowers, his sleeves and leggings
dyed with fruit stains, his hands clammy with the sweet juice of apples,
his hat sprinkled with pips, and everywhere about him that atmosphere
of cider which at its first return each season has such an indescribable
fascination for those who have been born and bred among the orchards."
The above is a prose-poem which is worthy to stand beside Keats' _Ode to
Autumn_.
* * * * *
William Barnes was born at Rushay, near Pentridge, a village about four
miles from Cranborne, in the north-east of the county, on the Wiltshire
border, and in the heart of the Vale of Blackmore, the beauties of which
he was never tired of extolling in his gentle poems enriched with his
native dialect. His mother was a woman of good education and refined
tastes, and he attended an endowed school at Struminster, where the
classes were composed of boys and girls and conducted in the American
way. On leaving school he entered a solicitor's office in the same town,
but at the age of eighteen he removed to Dorchester. In 1823 he went to
Mere, in Somerset, where he worked as a schoolmaster for four years in
loneliness. At this time he married Miss Julia Miles, and after an
additional eight years at Mere he returned to Dorchester, where teaching
was still his profession. One might almost say that Dorchester was his
spiritual birthplace, for here his genius began to attract more than
local attention, and here he grew into the hearts of the people so
deeply that when he passed away all wished to preserve his memory in the
form of a public statue. Barnes was one of the secretaries of the Dorset
Field Club. His most earnest wish was to enter the Church, and from St
John's College, Cambridge, he was ordained by the Bishop of Salisbury in
1847, and became pastor of Whitcombe. He fell on troublous days and
passed through a labyrinth of trials--sickness, death and sordid money
embarrassments. Only once did he allow his pent-up humours of
discouragement to break loose. One day he came in to his family with a
sheaf of correspondence in which letters from duns were accompanied by
others containing warm eulogy of the poet. "What a mockery is life!" he
exclaimed; "they praise me and take away my bread! They might be putting
up a statue to me 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," he added bitterly.
At about this time he was awarded a Civil List pension of seventy pounds
a year, while the gift of the living of Came relieved him of the anxiety
over money matters. The happiest days of his life were spent at Came,
and here he followed with great diligence his one hobby--the Anglicising
of the Latinised English words in our vocabulary, which he called
speech-lore.
He wrote two books on this subject, called _Redecraft_ and
_Speechcraft_. In his preface to _Speechcraft_ he announced it as "a
small trial towards the upholding of our own strong old Anglo-Saxon
speech and the ready teaching of it to purely English minds by their own
tongue." It was his fancy to replace all foreign and derived words with
words based on Saxon roots. The following are selected from his glossary
of Latinised words, with their Saxon equivalents facing them:--
Accelerate to on-quicken.
Accent word-strain.
Acoustics sound-lore.
Aeronaut air-farer.
Alienate to un-friend.
Ancestor fore-elder.
Aphorisms thought-cullings.
Botany wort-lore.
Democracy folkdom.
Deteriorate worsen.
Equilibrium weight-evenness.
Equivalent worth-evenness.
Foliate to leafen.
Initial word-head.
Thomas Hardy's note on the genius of his dead friend is a generous
estimate: "Unlike Burns, Béranger, and other poets of the people, Barnes
never assumed the high conventional style, and he entirely leaves alone
ambition, pride, despair, defiance, and other of the grander passions
which move mankind, great and small. His rustics are as a rule happy
people, and very seldom feel the sting of the rest of modern
mankind--the disproportion between the desire for serenity and the power
of obtaining it. One naturally thinks of Crabbe in this connection, but
though they touch at points, Crabbe goes much further than Barnes in
questioning the justice of circumstance. Their pathos, after all, is the
attribute upon which the poems must depend for their endurance; and the
incidents which embody it are those of everyday cottage life, tinged
throughout with that 'light that never was,' which the emotional art of
the lyrist can project upon the commonest things. It is impossible to
prophesy, but surely much English literature will be forgotten when
_Woak Hill_ is still read for its intense pathos, _Blackmore Maidens_
for its blitheness, and _In the Spring_ for its Arcadian ecstasy."
In 1896 he published a copy of _Early English and the Saxon English_. In
this he traces both Angles and Saxons. It was his idea that the ancient
dykes which cut up so much of our land were delved by them to mark their
settlements rather than to use in the case of warfare. He also sturdily
asserted that the Britons were accomplished road-makers before the
Romans came, and that the Romans merely improved roads already existing.
The poem of _Woak Hill_ is based on a Persian form of metre called _The
Pearl_, because the rhymes are supposed to represent a series of beads
upon a rosary. The pearl, or sequence of assonance, is shown in the
second word in the last line of each stanza:
"When sycamore-trees were a-spreading
Green-ruddy in hedges
Beside the red dust of the ridges
A-dried at Woak Hill,
I packed up my goods all a-shining
With long years of handling
On dusty red wheels of a waggon
To ride at Woak Hill.
The brown thatchen roof of the dwelling
I then were a-leaving
Had sheltered the sleek head of Mary
My bride at Woak Hill.
But now for some years her light footfall
'S a-lost from the flooring.
Too soon for my joy and my children
She died at Woak Hill.
But still I do think that in soul
She do hover about us
To ho' for her motherless children,
Her pride at Woak Hill.
So lest she should tell me hereafter
I stole off 'ithout her
And left her uncalled at house-ridden
To bide at Woak Hill,
I call'd her so fondly, with lippens
All soundless to others,
And took her with air-reaching hand
To my side at Woak Hill.
On the road I did look round, a-talking
To light at my shoulder,
And then led her in at the doorway,
Miles wide from Woak Hill.
And that's why folk thought, for a season,
My mind were a-wand'ring
With sorrow, when I were so sorely
A-tried at Woak Hill.
But no; that my Mary mid never
Behold herself slighted
I wanted to think that I guided
My guide from Woak Hill."
Barnes saw the pathos in the joy of utter physical weariness of a
labourer, and one of his finest poems depicts a cottage under a swaying
poplar:
"An' hands a-tired by day, were still,
Wi' moonlight on the door."
He always has that deep, quiet craving for the hearth, the fire, the
protecting thatch of a cottage, which gives his work a pathetic touch. I
think sometimes that Barnes must have been nearer to being cold,
homeless and tired at times than is generally understood.
CHAPTER VII
BERE REGIS AND THE ANCIENT FAMILY OF TURBERVILLE
We who have passed into the Upper Air
Thence behold Earth, and know how she is fair.
More than her sister Stars sweet Earth doth love us:
She holds our hearts: the Stars are high above us.
O Mother Earth! Stars are too far and rare!
Bere Regis, that "blinking little place" with a history extending back
to Saxon times (identified by Doctor Stukeley with the Roman Ibernium),
is a typical little Dorset town about seven miles to the north-west of
Wareham. It makes a capital walk or ride from Dorchester, and it was
this way I travelled. I left Dorchester by High Street East, ascending
Yellowham Hill, the "Yalbury Hill" of Troy's affecting meeting with
Fanny Robin, leaving Troy Town to pass through Puddletown and Tolpuddle.
Evening had fallen when I arrived at Bere Regis, and the rising wind and
flying wrack of clouds above seemed to presage a wild night. I was just
wondering whether, although it looked so threatening, I dared ride on to
Wareham, when my eyes rested on the Royal Oak Inn, with its Elizabethan
barns, mossed and mouldering red tiles and axe-hewn timbers.
"It is at such houses," I thought, "that men may stretch out weary legs
and taste home-cured bacon (I heard the squeak of a pig in the
outhouse), and such places are the homes of adventure. I will go in and
call for ale and a bed."
So I walked straight into the courtyard, which backs upon the church,
and found there a large man with considerable girth, a square, honest
face and kindly eyes. He was wearing a cap, and wearing it in a fine
rakish way too. His appearance gave me the impression that his wife had
tossed the cap at him and failed to drop it on his head squarely, but
had landed it in a lopsided manner, and then our friend had walked off
without thinking anything more about it. He was singing a song to
himself and staring at a pile of bundles of straw. He looked up and
nodded good-humouredly.
"Looks like rain!" said I.
"Aw 'es, tu be sure, now you come to mention it. I dawnt think rain's
far off."
"Can you tell me," said I, "if I can get a meal and a bed at this inn?"
"What you like," returned the man, with a quick tilt of his head, which
drew my eyes with a kind of fascination to his ill-balanced cap, "but as
I've nothing to do with the place I should ask the landlord avore me."
"Ah, to be sure," said I. "Sorry to trouble you. I thought you might be
the landlord."
The man stopped singing his song to stare at me wide-eyed.
"Well, I beant; but it's a fine thing to be a landlord, with barrels o'
beer down 'ouze and money in the bank."
"Then may I ask what trade you follow," said I, "and why you study that
straw so intently?"
"Young fellow," said he, staring, "I follow a main-zorry trade in these
days. I be a thatcher, and thatching to-the-truth-of-music is about done
for. If you look at these thatched cottages about Dorset they will tell
their own story. Why, the reed is just thrown on the roof hugger-mugger.
They can't thatch no more down this part, I can tellee; they lay it on
all of a heap."
"And is this the straw for thatching?" I inquired.
"Yes," said he, smiling; "they call them bundles of reed in Dorset--but
in my country, which is Devon, they call 'em 'nitches o' reed.'"
"Then you are not contented with your trade?"
"Not quite," answered the thatcher, his face falling. "It has always
been my wish to have a little inn--and barrels o' beer down 'ouze and
money...."
"Far better be a thatcher," said I.
"I'll be dalled ef I can see why."
"It's an out-of-doors life in the first place," said I.
The thatcher nodded, and his cap looked about as perilous as the Leaning
Tower of Pisa.
"It is a happier life, too, I should say."
"Aw! I an't ayerd nort about that," he returned.
"And who ever heard of a starving thatcher?"
"Young fellow," he sighed, "there soon will be no thatchers to starve.
Tez a lost art is thatching. I am the last of my family to follow the
trade, and we can go back three hundred years."
"Then thatch is dying out?"
"Yes, chiefly on the score of it being hard to 'dout' in case of fire."
"'Dout' is a strange old word. It means extinguish, I take it," said I.
"To be sure--extinguished. Maybe you've heard the story about the Devon
gal who went to London as a maid and when she told the mistress she had
'douted' the kitchen fire she was told to say 'extinguished' in future,
and not use such ill-sounding words. 'Ess, mum,' she said, 'and shall I
_sting-guish_ the old cat before I go to bed?'"
The thatcher laughed in his deep chest.
"But thatch suits us Devon folk middlin' well," he continued. "It's
warm in winter and cool in summer, and will stand more buffeting by the
wind and rain than all your cheap tiles and slates."
"And thatch is cheap too, perhaps?" I ventured.
"On the contrary," he answered. "Lukee, those nitches of reed cost four
shillings each, and you want three hundred bundles for a good-sized
roof. Then there is the best tar twine (which comes from Ireland), the
spars and the labour to be counted in. It takes three weeks on the
average house, but if the thatch is well laid it will last for thirty
years, and if I set my heart on a job and finish it off with a layer of
heath atop, well, then, it will last for ever. Ess, fay!"
"And what is the way you proceed to thatch a roof?" I asked.
[Illustration: HURDLE-MAKING AT BERE REGIS]
"Well," he answered, "it's not easy to explain. 'Lanes' of reed--wheat
straw, you would say--are first tied on the eave beams and gable beams;
these are called eave locks and gable locks. A 'lane of reed' is about
as long as a walking-stick and a bit thicker than a man's wrist, and a
thatched roof is composed of these 'lanes' tied on the roof beams, in
ridge fashion. Then when the reeds are all tied on, overlapping each
other, they are trimmed with a 'paring hook.' The reed has to be wet
when put up; that is why thatchers wear leather knee-knaps. The best
thatching reed comes from clay soil out Exeter and Crediton way."
"And where do you think," I asked, "can be seen the most perfect
examples of thatching in England?"
"I lay you won't see any better than the cottages around Lyme Regis and
Axminster. But soon Merry England will be done with thatch, for the boys
of the village are too proud to learn how to cut a spar or use a
thatcher's hook. Bless my soul! They all want to be clerks or school
teachers."
My friend the thatcher had a profound contempt for "school larning" and
he waxed triumphantly eloquent when he touched upon Council School
teachers.
"What poor, mimpsy-pimsy craychers they be, them teachers," he remarked.
"Fancy them trying to larn others, and ha'n't got the brains to larn
themselves!"
* * * * *
Bere Regis church is the most beautiful little building of its size in
Dorset. It is the captain and chief of all the village churches, and has
just managed to touch perfection in all the things that a wayside
shrine should achieve. There is an atmosphere about the old place that
is soothing and above the pleasure of physical experience. The qualities
of Bere Regis can only be fully appreciated with that sixth sense that
transcends gross sight and touch. Upon entering the building one is
captivated by the remarkable roof and the number of effigies, half
life-size, in the dress of the period, which are carved on the
hammer-beams. This magnificent carved and painted timber roof is said to
have been the gift of Cardinal Morton, born at Milborne Stileman, in
this parish. The roof effigies are supposed to represent the Twelve
Apostles, but they are not easily identified. The canopied Skerne tomb
possesses a special interest for its brasses and verse:
"I Skerne doe show that all our earthlie trust
All earthlie favours and goods and sweets are dust
Look on the worlds inside and look on me
Her outside is but painted vanity."
In the south porch will be found an interesting relic in the shape of
some old iron grappling-hooks used for pulling the thatch off a cottage
in the event of fire. An ancient altar-slab on which, perchance,
sacrifices have been offered has been preserved, and there is also a
fine old priest's chair, the upper arms of which have supported the
leaning bodies of a great company of Dorset vicars, for it must be
remembered that the priest was not allowed to _sit_ on the chair--but
"leaning" was permitted. The Norman pillars in the south arcade are
striking to the eye, and the humorous carvings on their capitals are
objects of great interest. One of them gives a very good picture of a
victim in the throes of toothache; apparently the sufferer has just
arrived at that stage in which the pain is mounting to a crescendo of
agony, for he has inserted his eight fingers in his mouth in an attempt
to battle with his tormentors. The other figure displays some poor
fellow who is a martyr to headache--perhaps a gentle reproof and warning
to those who were inclined to tarry overlong in the taverns. But the
main object of interest is the Turberville window in the south aisle,
beneath which is the ledger-stone covering the last resting-place of
this wild, land-snatching family, which is lettered as follows:--
"Ostium sepulchri antiquae Famillae Turberville
24 Junij 1710."
("The door of the sepulchre of the ancient family of the Turbervilles.")
It was at this vault stone that Tess bent down and said:
"Why am I on the wrong side of this door!" Perhaps it is as well to
recite the outline of Hardy's story of _Tess_ at this stage of our
pilgrimage. Tess Durbeyfield, the daughter of poor and feeble-minded
parents and descendant of a noble but somewhat wild old family, was
forcibly seduced by a wealthy young loafer whose father had taken, with
no right to it, Tess's proper name of "D'Urberville." A child was born,
but died. Some years after Tess became betrothed to a clergyman's son,
Angel Clare. On their wedding night Tess confessed to him her past
relations with Alec D'Urberville, and thereupon Clare, a man who was not
without sin himself, left her. In the end Fate conspired to force Tess
back into the protection of Alec. Clare, who cannot be looked upon as
anything but half-baked and insincere, returns repentant from Canada and
finds her living with D'Urberville. In order to be free to return to
Clare, Tess stabbed Alec to the heart, for which she was arrested, tried
and hanged.
In this romance Bere Regis figures as "Kingsbere," and the church is the
subject of many references. It was on one of the "canopied,
altar-shaped" Turberville tombs that poor Tess noticed, with a sudden
qualm of blank fear, that the effigy moved. "As soon as she drew close
to it she discovered all in a moment that the figure was a living
person; and the shock to her sense of not having been alone was so
violent that she almost fainted, not, however, till she had recognised
Alec D'Urberville in the form."
Here Alec D'Urberville stamped with his heel heavily above the stones of
the ancient family vault, whereupon there arose a hollow echo from
below, and remarked airily to Tess: "A family gathering is it not, with
these old fellows under us here?"
In the south wall a doorway which has been long filled in can still be
traced. There is nothing of special note in this alteration, but a
legend has been handed down which is worth recording here. It is said
that one of the Turberville family quarrelled with the vicar of Bere
Regis and ended a stormy meeting by declaring that he would never again
pass through the old door of the church. As time went on the lure of the
Turberville dead in the ancient shrine obsessed him and he grew to
regret the haste in which he had cut himself off from the ancient
possessors of his land. After some years Fate arranged a chance meeting
between the vicar and Turberville at a village feast, and under the
influence of the general good-fellowship and merry-making they buried
the hatchet and fell to discussing old times and friends. When time came
for the breaking up of the entertainment it was only Turberville's
dogged determination to keep his vow which prevented a return to the
old happy conditions before the breach of friendship.
"There is one thing I would ask you to do, Vicar," said Turberville as
he parted. "When you attend vespers to-morrow just tell the old
Turberville squires to sleep soundly in their vault. Although I have
vowed never to pass through the church door while I am alive, I cannot
stop 'em _carrying_ me through when I am dead--so I shall sleep with
them in the end."
However, the worthy vicar went to the town stone-mason next morning and
arranged to cut a new doorway in the south wall, and thus it came to
pass that the independent and stubborn Turberville once again was able
to worship with the shades of his fathers and yet keep to his promise
never to pass through the _old_ door again.
The first of the family of Turberville was Sir Payne de Turberville (de
Turba Villa), who came over with William the Norman. From Sir Payne down
to the last descendants of the family who form the theme of Thomas
Hardy's romance, _Tess of the D'Urbervilles_, the Turbervilles were a
strange, wild company. It is excusable, too, in a way, for it appears
that the first of the line, after the battle of Hastings, was one of the
twelve knights who helped Robert FitzHamon, Lord of Estremaville, in
his evil work and returned to England when his commander was created
Earl of Gloucester. In an ancient document of the time of Henry III. we
come across a striking illustration of the unscrupulous ways of this
family, for it is recorded that John de Turberville was then paying an
annual fine on some land near Bere Regis, which his people before him
had filched from the estate of the Earl of Hereford. The Turbervilles
were established in the neighbourhood in 1297. Bryants Puddle, a very
rude little hamlet situated on the River Piddle a little to the
south-west of Bere, receives its title from Brian de Turberville, who
was lord of the manor in the reign of Edward III. The village was
anciently called "Piddle Turberville," but this name has been replaced
by Bryants Puddle.
At a later period the Turbervilles came into the possession of the manor
of Bere Regis at the breaking up of Tarent Abbey, and at this time the
good fortune of the family was at its zenith. But with the spoils of the
church came a gradual and general downfall of the old family, and with
the increased riches, we may conjecture, the Turbervilles went roaring
on their way more riotously than ever. There is an entry in the parish
registers of Bere, under the year 1710, of the interment of Thomas
Turberville, the last of the ancient race. An intermediate stage of the
house is represented by D'Albigny Turberville, the oculist mentioned by
Pepys, who died in 1696 and was buried in Salisbury Cathedral. After the
year 1710 the old manor-house of the Turbervilles, standing near the
church, was strangely silent. Their time was over and gone, the wine had
been drunk, the singers had departed. But the stories of their carousals
and great deeds were still a matter for dispute and discussion at the
village inn, and the eerie old house was especially regarded with
feelings of awe and few cared to go near it after dark. It was not what
they had seen, but what they might see, that caused them to shun the old
place. I can picture the Dorset rustic of that time (and the distance
between Hodge the "Goodman" of 1710 and Hodge the driver of the motor
tractor is almost nothing at all) shaking his head on being asked his
reasons for avoiding the house, and saying, with a grin, as how he
"shouldn't like to go poking about such a divered [dead] old hole."
The ancient manor-house was allowed to lapse into ruin, and now nothing
at all remains but a few crumbling stones:
"Through broken walls and grey
The winds blow bleak and shrill;
They are all gone away.
Nor is there one to-day
To speak them good or ill;
There is nothing more to say."
There is reason to believe that the rustics in Wilts and Dorset who bear
different forms of the name Turberville, altered into Tellafield and
Troublefield, are in truth the descendants of illegitimate branches of
the family. One ancient Dorset rustic with the name of Tollafield, who
aroused my interest, said to me in all seriousness that he would not
care to go rummaging into the history of the old Turberville people.
"You depend upon it, they were a bad lot--the parson told me so. There
is no telling what them folks' speerits might not be up to, if so be the
old devil had got ahold on 'em." This rustic, though an old man, had an
eye as keen as a hawk's, was a man of immensely powerful frame, and
would sleep under a hedge any night and feel little the worse for it.
When I looked at his clear, hard blue eyes and straight, haughty nose he
gave me the feeling that the Turberville blood had really survived in
him. Then I learned that he was a flagrant poacher and, like the old
earth-stopper in Masefield's poem,
"His snares made many a rabbit die.
On moony nights he found it pleasant
To stare the woods for roosting pheasants
Up near the tree-trunk on the bough.
He never trod behind a plough.
He and his two sons got their food
From wild things in the field and wood."
It was my fortune to run into the old fellow coming out of the Royal Oak
one night with his friends. He was very exuberant and arrogant. I heard
him offering to fight three men, "knock one down, t'other come on"
style. Then it came over me with a sudden sense of largeness and
quietude that the game old ruffian had his place in the order of things.
This tyrant of the low Tudor tap-room was perhaps a Turberville, one of
the rightful, immemorial owners of the land. If he has not the right to
a pheasant for his Sunday dinner, then tell me who has. Perhaps when we,
with our picture palaces and styles and jazzy-dances, have passed away
our hoary friend the poacher will abide, his feet among his clods,
rooted deep in his native soil. And if all this thin veneer of
civilisation was suddenly ripped away from us, how should we emerge?
Hodge would still go on poaching, sleeping under hedges, outwitting the
wild things in the woods and drinking home-brewed ale. He would not even
feel any temporary inconvenience. How old-fashioned and out-of-date we
with all our new things would feel if we were suddenly brought into line
with the eternally efficient Hodge!
[Illustration: Woolbridge House]
From Bere Regis to Wool is a pleasant ride of five or six miles. Close
to Wool station is the manor-house, now a farm, which was once the
residence of a younger branch of the Turberville family, and readers
will remember it is the place where Tess and Angel Clare came to spend
their gloomy and tragic honeymoon. In Hardy's _Tess_ the house is called
Wellbridge Manor House, in remembrance of the days when Wool was called
Welle, on account of the springs which are so plentiful in this
district. Of course the house is named from the five-arched Elizabethan
bridge which spans the reed-fringed River Frome at this point. Each arch
of the bridge is divided by triangular buttresses, which at the
road-level form recesses where foot-passengers may take refuge from
passing motors or carts. The manor-house is of about the time of Henry
VIII., and has been much renovated. Over the doorway a date stone
proclaims that the building was raised in 1635 (or 1655), but it has
been suggested that this is the date of a restoration or addition to the
building. The two pictures of Tess's ancestors mentioned in the novel
actually exist, and are to be seen on the wall of the staircase: "two
life-sized portraits on panels built into the wall. 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."
Old records show that in ancient times a curious custom was observed on
Annual Court Day at Wool. It was known as collecting smoke-pence. It
appears that the head of every house was called upon to pay a penny for
each of his chimneys as a token that the property belonged to the manor.
The money was collected by the constable, who was obliged to bring
twenty pence into court, or make up the money himself.
The most characteristic and altogether unique feature of this nook of
earth around Bere Regis is that superstition has not ceased to exist
among the old people of the land. It is difficult to believe that there
is a little district in England where superstition is still a part--a
very obscure part, it is true--of the life of the people. But here I
have noticed the shadow of witchcraft and magic thrown across the
commonplace things of rustic life again and again while talking with old
cronies over their beer, or along the winding hill roads. But it must be
understood that the Dorset man does not talk to any chance wayfarer on
such matters: the subject of the "Borderland" and "spiritual creatures"
is strictly set apart for the log fire and chimney corner on winter
evenings. It is when the wooden shutters are up to the windows, and the
tranquillising clay pipes are sending up their incense to the oak
cross-beams, that we may cautiously turn the conversation on to such
matters. On one such occasion as I watched the keen, wrinkled faces, on
which common sense, shrewdness and long experience had set their marks,
I wondered if two local farmers had made such sinners of their memories
as to credit their own fancy. But no, I would not believe they were in
earnest. It was only their quaint humour asserting itself. They were
surely "piling it on" in order to deceive me! However, that was not the
solution, for when the time came, somewhere about midnight, for one of
the farmers to return home he stolidly refused to face the dark trackway
back to his farm, and preferred to spend the night in the arm-chair
before the fire. But let one of the dwellers on Bere Heath tell of his
own superstitions. Here is old Gover coming over the great Elizabethan
bridge which spans the rushy River Frome at Wool. One glance at his
cheerful, weather-beaten face will tell you better than a whole chapter
of a book that he is no "lablolly" (fool), but a man of sound judgment,
easy notions and general good character, like Hardy's Gabriel Oak.
Leaning on the ancient stonework of the bridge, and smacking his
vamplets (rough gaiters used by thatchers to defend the legs from wet)
with a hazel stick, he stops to talk. A motor lorry filled with churns
of milk passes on its way to drop its consignment at Wool railway
siding.
"Tellee what 'tis," said Gover to me, pointing to the lorry: "'twill be
a poor-come-a-long-o'-'t now them motors are taking the place o' horses
everywhere. Can't get no manure from them things, and the land is no
good without manure. Mr Davis the farmer at Five Mile Bottom hev got
five Ford cars now where ten horses used to feed. He sez to me that he
don't want any horse manure--chemical manures is good enough for him.
But he dunnow nort 't-all-'bout-et! He'll eat the heart out of his soil
with his chemicals, and his farm will be barren in a year or so. Ess, by
Gor! You bant agwain to do justice to the soil without real manure, and
them as thinks they can dawnt know A from a 'oss's 'ead."
Then I asked Gover about the Turberville ghost which we are told haunts
this lane, and which is the subject of an allusion in Hardy's _Tess of
the D'Urbervilles_. His keen old face became serious at once. No ghosts
or goblins had troubled him, he said, but John Rawles and another chap
saw as plain as could be a funeral going along from Woolbridge House to
Bere Regis, and they heard the priest singing in front of the coffin,
but they could not understand what he did say. There was a cattle gate
across the road in those days and Rawles ran to open it, but before he
could get there the coffin had passed through the gate and it had all
vanished! He had often heard tell of people who had seen ghosts, and he
would not be put about if he did see one himself.
"So you have not seen the blood-stained family coach of the
Turbervilles?" I inquired.
"No, I never see that," said Gover, shaking his head, "nor never heard
of it."
"Then, as it is a tale that every child should know," I said, "I will
tell you now, and you shall believe it or no, precisely as you choose.
Once upon a time there was a Turberville who deserves to be remembered
and to be called, so to speak, the limb of the 'old 'un' himself, for he
spent all his days in wickedness, and went roaring to the devil as fast
as all his vices could send him. I have heard it said that he snapped
his fingers in the face of a good parson who came to see him on his
death-bed, saying he did not wish to talk balderdash, or to hear it, and
bade him clear out and send up his servant with fighting-cocks and a
bottle of brandy. Gradually all the drinking and vice, which had
besieged his soul for so long, swept him into a state of temporary
madness and he murdered a friend while they were riding to Woolbridge
House in the family coach. The friend he struck down had Turberville
blood in his veins too, so you may be certain the blame was not all on
one side. Ever since the evil night the coach with the demon horses
dragging it sways and rocks along the road between Wool and Bere, and
the murderer rushes after it, moaning and wringing his hands, but never
having the fortune to catch it up. The spectacle of the haunted coach
cannot be seen by the ordinary wayfarer; it is only to be seen by
persons in which the blood of the Turbervilles is mixed."
"Ah!" nodded old Gover, "I don't hold with that story. If so be as that
'ere Turberville who murdered t'other hev a-gone up above, 'tain't
likely as how he'll be wishful to go rowstering after that ripping great
coach on a dalled bad road like this." And then he shook his bony finger
in my face and added: "And if the dowl have a-got hold on 'im he won't
be able to go gallyvanting about--he'll be kept there!"
Wool has another attraction in the ruins of Bindon Abbey, lying in the
thick wood seen from the station, a few minutes to the south of the
line towards Wareham. The ruins are very scanty. A few slabs and coffins
are still preserved, and one stone bears the inscription in Lombardic
characters:
ABBAS RICARDUS DE MANERS HIC TUMULATUR
APPOENAS TARDUS DEUS HUNC SALVANS
TUEATUR
The Abbey is in a wood by the river--a gloomy, fearsome, dark place.
This is the Wellbridge Abbey of Hardy's _Tess_, and we read that
"against the north wall of the ruined choir was the empty stone coffin
of an abbot, in which every tourist with a turn for grim humour was
accustomed to stretch himself." This is, of course, the lidless coffin
in which Angel Clare, walking in his sleep, laid Tess. Woolbridge House
is not so near to this spot as Thomas Hardy gives one to understand in
the novel. Near the ruin is the old mill of Bindon Abbey, situated on
the Frome, where Angel Clare proposed to learn milling. It is called
"Wellbridge Mill" in _Tess_.
The old Abbey wood is full of shadows and is the kind of place that one
would write down as immemorially old, barren and sinister. The singular
impressiveness of its ivy-grown walls, shadowed by heavy masses of
foliage, depresses one dreadfully. The straight footpaths beneath the
trees have been worn into deep tracks by the attrition of feet for many
centuries. Under the trees are the fish-ponds which played such an
important part in provisioning the monks' larder. They are so concealed
from the daylight that they take on a shining jet-black surface. A book
might be written about the place--a book of terrible and fateful ghost
tales.
CHAPTER VIII
ROUND AND ABOUT WEYMOUTH
I walk in the world's great highways,
In the dusty glare and riot,
But my heart is in the byways
That thread across the quiet;
By the wild flowers in the coppice,
There the track like a sleep goes past,
And paven with peace and poppies,
Comes down to the sea at last.
E. G. BUCKERIDGE.
Modern Weymouth is made up of two distinct townships, Weymouth and
Melcombe Regis, which were formerly separate boroughs, with their own
parliamentary representatives. Of the two Weymouth is probably the
older, but Melcombe can be traced well-nigh back to the Conquest; and
now, although it is the name of Weymouth that has obtained the
prominence, it is to Melcombe that it is commonly applied. Many visitors
to Weymouth never really enter the real, ancient Weymouth, now chiefly
concerned in the brewing of Dorset ale. The pier, town, railway station
and residences are all in Melcombe Regis. The local conditions are
something more than peculiar. The little River Wey has an estuary
altogether out of proportion to its tiny stream, called the Blackwater.
The true original Weymouth stands on the right bank of the estuary at
its entrance into Weymouth Bay. Across the mouth of the estuary, leaving
a narrow channel only open, stretches a narrow spit of land, on which
stands Melcombe. The Blackwater has thus a lake-like character, and its
continuation to the sea, the harbour, may be likened to a canal. The
local annals of the kingdom can hardly furnish such another instance of
jealous rivalry as the strife between the two boroughs. Barely a
stone's-throw apart, they were the most quarrelsome of neighbours, and
for centuries lived the most persistent "cat and dog" life. Whatever was
advanced by one community was certain to be opposed by the other, and
not even German and English hated each other with a more perfect hatred
than did the burgesses of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis. As they would not
live happy single, it was resolved to try what married life would do,
and so in 1571 the two corporations were rolled into one, the only
vestige of the old days retained being the power of electing four
members to Parliament from the joint municipality--a right which was
exercised until 1832. Not until the union was the old-fashioned ferry
over the Wey supplemented by a bridge, the predecessor of that which
now joins the two divisions of the dual town. The union proved to be a
success, and in this way Weymouth saved both itself and its name from
becoming merely a shadow and a memory.
It is to George III. that Weymouth must be eternally grateful, for just
in the same way as George IV. turned Brighthelmstone into Brighton, it
was George III. who _made_ Weymouth. Of course there was a Weymouth long
before his day, but whatever importance it once possessed had long
disappeared when he took it up. For many years the King spent long
summer holidays at Gloucester Lodge, a mansion facing the sea, and now
the sedate Gloucester Hotel.
Considering its undoubted age, Weymouth is remarkably barren in traces
of the past, and a few Elizabethan houses, for the most part modernised,
well-nigh exhaust its antiquities.
Weymouth, which figures as "Budmouth" in Hardy's romances, is the
subject of many references. Uncle Bengy, in _The Trumpet Major_, found
Budmouth a plaguy expensive place, for "If you only eat one egg, or even
a poor windfall of an apple, you've got to pay; and a bunch of radishes
is a halfpenny, and a quart o' cider tuppence three-farthings at lowest
reckoning. Nothing without paying!"
When George III. and the sun of prosperity shone upon the tradesfolk of
Weymouth the spirit of pecuniary gain soon became rampant. The inflated
prices which so roused poor old Uncle Bengy even staggered Queen
Charlotte, and "Peter Pindar" (Dr John Wolcot) criticised her household
thriftiness in bringing stores and provisions from Windsor:
"Bread, cheese, salt, catchup, vinegar and mustard,
Small beer and bacon, apple pie and custard;
All, all from Windsor, greets his frugal Grace,
For Weymouth is a d----d expensive place."
Sandsfoot Castle, built by Henry VIII., on the southern shore of the
spit of land called the Nothe, Weymouth Bay, is now a mere pile of
corroded stone. It was built as a fort when England feared an invasion
prompted by the Pope. The old pile plays a prominent part in Hardy's
_The Well-Beloved_. The statue of King George, which is such an object
of ridicule to the writers of guide-books, was the meeting-place of
Fancy Day and Dick Dewy in _Under the Greenwood Tree_.
The "Budmouth" localities mentioned in _The Trumpet Major_ are: the
Quay; Theatre Royal; Barracks; Gloucester Lodge; and the Old Rooms Inn
in Love Row, once a highly fashionable resort which was used for dances
and other entertainments by the ladies and gentlemen who formed the
Court of George III. It was also the spot where the battle of Trafalgar
was discussed in _The Dynasts_. However, the old assembly rooms and the
theatre have now vanished. Mention of Hardy's tremendous drama reminds
me that it is rarely quoted in topographical works on Dorset, and yet it
is full of the spirit and atmosphere of Wessex. Thus in a few words he
tells us what "Boney" seemed like to the rustics of Dorset:
"WOMAN (_in undertones_). I can tell you a word or two on't. It is about
His victuals. They say that He lives upon human flesh, and has rashers
o' baby every morning for breakfast--for all the world like the Cernel
Giant in old ancient times!
"SECOND OLD MAN. I only believe half. And I only own--such is my
challengeful character--that perhaps He do eat pagan infants when He's
in the desert. But not Christian ones at home. Oh no--'tis too much!
"WOMAN. Whether or no, I sometimes--God forgi'e me!--laugh wi' horror at
the queerness o't, till I am that weak I can hardly go round house. He
should have the washing of 'em a few times; I warrent 'a wouldn't want
to eat babies any more!"
There are a hundred clean-cut, bright things in _The Dynasts_, and some
of the songs are so cunningly fashioned that we know the author must
surely have overheard them so often that they have become part of his
life. Does the reader remember this from the first volume?--
"In the wild October night-time, when the wind raved round the
land,
And the Back-sea met the Front-sea, and our doors were blocked
with sand,
And we heard the drub of Dead-man's Bay, where bones of thousands
are,
We knew not what the day had done for us at Trafalgar.
(_All_) Had done,
Had done
For us at Trafalgar!"
Or the other ballad sung by a Peninsular sergeant--
"When we lay where Budmouth Beach is,
Oh, the girls were fresh as peaches,
With their tall and tossing figures and their eyes of blue and
brown!
And our hearts would ache with longing
As we passed from our sing-songing,
With a smart _Clink! Clink!_ up the Esplanade and down."
The principal attraction of Weymouth is its magnificent bay, which has
caused the town to be depicted on the railway posters as the "Naples of
England"; but Mr Harper, in his charming book, _The Hardy Country_,
cruelly remarks that no one has yet found Naples returning the
compliment and calling itself the "Weymouth of Italy." But there is no
need for Weymouth to powder and paint herself with fanciful
attractions, for her old-world glamour is full of enchantment. The pure
Georgian houses on the Esplanade, with their fine bow windows and
red-tiled roofs, are very warm and homely, and remind one of the glories
of the coaching days. They are guiltless of taste or elaboration, it is
true, but they have an honest savour about them which is redolent of
William Cobbett, pig-skin saddles, real ale and baked apples. And those
are some of the realest things in the world. There is a distinct
"atmosphere" about the shops near the harbour too. They shrink back from
the footpath in a most timid way, and each year they seem to settle down
an inch or so below the street-level, with the result that they are
often entered by awkward steps.
Near the Church of St Mary is the Market, which on Fridays and Tuesdays
presents a scene of colour and activity. In the Guildhall are several
interesting relics, the old stocks and whipping-posts, a chest captured
from the Spanish Armada and a chair from the old house of the Dominican
friars which was long ago demolished.
Preston, three miles north-east of Weymouth, is a prettily situated
village on the main road to Wareham, with interesting old thatched
cottages and a fifteenth-century church containing an ancient font, a
Norman door, holy-water stoups and squint. At the foot of the hill a
little one-arched bridge over the stream was once regarded as Roman
masonry, but the experts now think it is Early Norman work. Adjoining
Preston is the still prettier village of Sutton Poyntz, hemmed in by the
Downs, on the side of which, in a conspicuous position, is the famous
figure, cut in the turf, of King George III. on horseback. He looks very
impressive, with his cocked hat and marshal's baton. Sutton Poyntz is
the principal locale of Hardy's story of _The Trumpet Major_. The tale
is of a sweet girl, Anne Garland, and two brothers Loveday, who loved
her; the "gally-bagger" sailor, Robert, who won her, and John, the
easy-going, gentle soldier, who lost her. _The Trumpet Major_ is a
mellow, loamy novel, and the essence of a century of sunshine has found
its way into the pages. Even the pensiveness of the story--the sadness
of love unsatisfied--is mellow. The village to-day, with its tree-shaded
stream, crooked old barns and stone cottages, recalls the spirit of the
novel with Overcombe Mill as a central theme. How vividly the pilgrim
can recall the Mill, with its pleasant rooms, old-world garden, and the
stream where the cavalry soldiers came down to water their horses! It
was a dearly loved corner of England for John Loveday, and if to keep
those meadows safe and fair a life was required, he was perfectly
willing to pay the price--nay, more, he was proud and glad to do so. In
the end John was killed in one of the battles of the Peninsular War, and
his spirit is echoed by a soldier poet who went to his death in 1914:
"Mayhap I shall not walk again
Down Dorset way, down Devon way.
Nor pick a posy in a lane
Down Somerset and Sussex way.
But though my bones, unshriven, rot
In some far-distant alien spot,
What soul I have shall rest from care
To know that meadows still are fair
Down Dorset way, down Devon way."
The mill is not the one sketched in the tale, but it still grinds corn,
and one can still see "the smooth mill-pond, over-full, and intruding
into the hedge and into the road." The real mill is actually at Upwey.
Bincombe, two miles north-east of Upwey, is one of the "outstep placen,"
where the remnants of dialect spoken in the days of Wessex kings is not
quite dead, and as we go in and out among the old cottages we come upon
many a word which has now been classed by annotators as "obsolete." "I'd
as lief be wooed of a snail," says Rosalind in _As You Like It_ of the
tardy Orlando, and "I'd as lief" or "I'd liefer" is still heard here in
Bincombe. There is a large survival of pure Saxon in the Wessex speech,
and Thomas Hardy has made a brave attempt to preserve the old local
words in his novels. He has always deplored the fact that schools were
driving out the racy Saxon words of the West Country, and once remarked
to a friend:
"I have no sympathy with the criticism which would treat English as a
dead language--a thing crystallised at an arbitrarily selected stage of
its existence, and bidden to forget that it has a past and deny that it
has a future. Purism, whether in grammar or vocabulary, almost always
means ignorance. Language was made before grammar, not grammar before
language. And as for the people who make it their business to insist on
the utmost possible impoverishment of our English vocabulary, they seem
to me to ignore the lessons of history, science, and common sense.
"It has often seemed to me a pity, from many points of view--and from
the point of view of language among the rest--that Winchester did not
remain, as it once was, the royal, political, and social capital of
England, leaving London to be the commercial capital. The relation
between them might have been something like that between Paris and
Marseilles or Havre; and perhaps, in that case, neither of them would
have been so monstrously overgrown as London is to-day. We should then
have had a metropolis free from the fogs of the Thames Valley; situated,
not on clammy clay, but on chalk hills, the best soil in the world for
habitation; and we might have preserved in our literary language a
larger proportion of the racy Saxon of the West Country. Don't you think
there is something in this?"
Returning from Bincombe and passing through Sutton to Preston we come in
a mile to Osmington. A short distance beyond the village a narrow road
leads off seawards to Osmington Mills. Crossing the hills, this narrower
road descends to the coast and the Picnic Inn--a small hostelry noted
for "lobster lunches" and "prawn teas." If we strike inland from
Osmington we come to Poxwell, the old manor-house of the Hennings, a
curiously walled-in building with a very interesting gate-house. This is
the Oxwell Manor of _The Trumpet Major_ and the house of Benjamin
Derriman--"a wizened old gentleman, in a coat the colour of his
farmyard, breeches of the same hue, unbuttoned at the knees, revealing a
bit of leg above his stocking and a dazzlingly white shirt-frill to
compensate for this untidiness below. The edge of his skull round his
eye-sockets was visible through the skin, and he walked with great
apparent difficulty."
Pressing onward from this village, we arrive, after a two-mile walk, at
"Warm'ell Cross," three miles south-west of Moreton station. The left
road leads to Dorchester, the right one to Wareham, and the centre one
across the immemorially ancient and changeless "Egdon Heath." Here we
turn to the right and Owermoigne, the "Nether Mynton" in which the
events of _The Distracted Preacher_ take place. Here indeed is a nook
which seems to be a survival from another century; a patch of England of
a hundred years ago set down in the England of to-day. The church where
Lizzie Newberry and her smugglers stored "the stuff" is hidden from
those who pass on the highroad and is reached by a little rutty, crooked
lane. The body of the church has been rebuilt, but the tower where the
smugglers looked down upon the coastguard officers searching for their
casks of brandy remains the same.
The highway leads for two miles along the verge of Egdon Heath, and then
we come to a right-hand turning taking us past Winfrith Newburgh and
over the crest of the chalk downs steeply down to West Lulworth.
Lulworth Cove is justly considered one of the most delightful and
picturesque retreats on the coast. It is a circular little basin
enclosed by towering cliffs of chalk and sand and entered by a narrow
opening between two bluffs of Portland stone. It exhibits a section of
all the beds between the chalk and oolite, and owes its peculiar form to
the unequal resistance of these strata to the action of the sea. The
perpetually moving water, having once pierced the cliff of stone, soon
worked its way deeply into the softer sand and chalk.
Lulworth is the "Lullstead Cove" of the Hardy novels. Here Sergeant Troy
was supposed to have been drowned; it is one of the landing-places
chosen by the Distracted Preacher's parishioners during their smuggling
exploits, and in _Desperate Remedies_ it is the first meeting-place of
Cynthera Graye and Edward Springrove.
The cove is most conveniently reached from Swanage by steamer. By rail
the journey is made to Wool and thence by bus for five miles southward.
By road the short way is by Church Knowle, Steeple, Tyneham and East
Lulworth--but the hills are rather teasing; however, the views are
wonderful. It is nine miles if one takes the Wareham road from Corfe as
far as Stoborough, there turning to the left for East Holme, West Holme
and East Lulworth.
The entrance to the cove from the Channel is a narrow opening in the
cliff, which here rises straight from the sea. Mounted on a summit on
the eastern side of the breach is a coastguard's look-out, while in a
hollow on the other side are the remains of Little Bindon Abbey. The
cove is an almost perfect circle, and in summer the tide, as it flows
in, fills the white cove with a shimmering sheet of light blue water.
Each wave breaks the surface into a huge circle, and the effect from the
heights is a succession of wonderful sparkling rings vanishing into the
yellow sands. To the east rise the ridges of Bindon Hill and the grey
heights of Portland stone that terminate seaward in the _Mupe Rocks_,
then the towering mass of _Ring's Hill_, crowned by the large oblong
entrenchment known as Flower's Barrow, which has probably been both a
British and a Roman camp.
In the summer steamers call daily at the cove. The landing is effected
by means of boats or long gangways. After having climbed the hill roads
into Lulworth, the pilgrim will not, I am certain, look with any delight
upon a return to them, and will welcome an alternative trip to Swanage,
Weymouth or Bournemouth by an excursion steamer.
[Illustration: CORFE CASTLE
From a photograph taken in 1865
The old-time shepherd stands in the foreground with his dog--a shaggy
ruffian of a now fast-disappearing breed]
Portisham, under the bold, furzy hills that rise to the commanding
height of Blackdown, appears in _The Trumpet Major_ as the village to
which Bob Loveday (who was spasmodically in love with Anne Garland)
comes to attach himself to Admiral Hardy for service in the Royal Navy.
Notwithstanding the fact that Robert Loveday is merely an imaginary
character, the admiral was a renowned hero in real life, and no less a
personage than Admiral Sir Thomas Hardy. He lived here, in a picturesque
old house just outside the village, and the chimney-like tower on Black
Down was erected to his memory. In a garden on the opposite side of the
road to Hardy's house is a sundial, inscribed:
JOSEPH HARDY, ESQ.
KINGSTON RUSSELL, LAT. 50° 45'
1769
FUGIO FUGE
Admiral Hardy was born at Kingston Russell, and his old home at
Portisham is still in the possession of a descendant on the female side.
From Portisham a walk of four miles leads to Abbotsbury, situated at the
verge of the Vale of Wadden and the Chesil Beach. The railway station is
about ten minutes' walk from the ancient village, which consists of a
few houses picturesquely dotted around the church and scattered ruins of
the Abbey of St Peter. The abbey was originally founded in King Knut's
reign by Arius, the "house-carl," or steward, to the king, about 1044,
in the reign of Edward the Confessor. The building at the south-east
corner of the church is part of the old abbey. It is now used as a
carpenter's shop, but an old stoup can be seen in the corner. At the
farther end of this building is a cell in which the last abbot is said
to have been starved to death.
A gate-house porch and a buttressed granary of fourteenth-century
architecture, still used as a barn, and a pond, with a tree-covered
island, the ancient fish-pond of the monks, are all that remain to
remind us of the historic past of this spot.
CHAPTER IX
POOLE
The wide expanse of Poole Harbour is a well-known haunt of sportsmen,
for in the winter it is the home of innumerable wild-fowl, and for those
who are fond of yachting and pottering about with boats it is large
enough to test their skill and patience in controlling a craft in the
wind and wave. Here we get a double tide, the second rising rather
higher than the first, and when the tide is in the view is not unlike a
Dutch landscape. But the ebb lays bare acres of mud-banks, which mar the
prospect. However, the marine emanations from the mud-banks are said to
be very salubrious. This harbour is the only haven between Southampton
and Weymouth for yachting men.
Inland from Poole the country is pleasantly varied by hills and heaths,
through which, on the west side of the harbour, the verge of Bournemouth
is reached, and an hour's walk will take the pilgrim over the Hampshire
boundary.
Poole Quay, where we smell the smell of tar, piled-up teak and reeking
pine, is an interesting place for lovers of the picturesque. Here we
find an old postern gate of Richard III.'s day, and the Town Cellar or
Wool House. The last recalls the days when Poole was part of the manor
of Canford. The lords of Canford sometimes received toll in kind, and
the goods handed over were stored in this "Town Cellar." It is
particularly interesting for the way its walls are formed, of flint and
large, squared pieces of stone.
The smuggling for which Poole was long notorious is handed down to
posterity by the following doggerel:--
"If Poole was a fish-pool, and the men of Poole fish,
There'd be a pool for the devil, and fish for his dish."
One of the most daring and successful of English buccaneers was _Harry
Page_ of Poole, or, as he was more commonly called, _Arripay_. His
enterprises were principally directed against the coasts of France and
Spain, where he committed such havoc that a formidable expedition was
fitted out in those countries to destroy him. It sailed along our
southern shores, destroying as opportunity offered, until it reached
Poole. Here it landed, and a battle ensued, in which the inhabitants
were driven from the town and the brother of Arripay killed.
The island of _Brownsea_ or _Branksea_ (it has a score of other
variations) is the most prominent feature in Poole Harbour. It is ovoid
in shape, about one and a half miles long by one mile broad, and lies
just within the narrow harbour entrance, the main channel sweeping round
its eastern side. This made the island of considerable importance in the
defence of the port, and led to the erection of _Brownsea Castle_
towards the end of the reign of Henry VIII. Prior to this Brownsea had
been part of the possessions of the Abbey of Cerne. The castle was
almost wholly destroyed by fire in 1896, and in the following year
rebuilt.
From Poole the pilgrim can cross by the toll-bridge to Hamworth and
visit Lytchett Minster, which is two miles north-west of the lonely
railway junction. Part of the action of _The Hand of Ethelberta_ takes
place in this neighbourhood. The sign of one of the village inns, "St
Peter's Finger," is one of the most interesting features of Lytchett
Minster. The sign shows St Peter holding up a hand with two extended
fingers, and is a curious instance of the way in which old terms and
traditions are exposed to corruption. Sir B. Windle explains the matter
tersely and clearly: "August the 1st, Lammas Day, known in the calendar
of the Catholic Church as St Peter ad Vincula, was one of the days on
which prædial service had to be done for the lord of certain manors, as
a condition of tenure by the occupants. Such lands were called St
Peter-ad-Vincula lands, a term which easily got corrupted into St
Peter's finger."
A brief description of Poole--under the Wessex name of "Havenpool"--is
given in Hardy's "To please his Wife," one of the short stories of
_Life's Little Ironies_. It is the story of Captain Shadrack Jolliff,
who gave up the sea and settled down in his native town as a grocer,
marrying Joanna Phippard. They had two sons, but the captain did not
make much progress in business and his wife persuaded him to go to sea
again, as they were in need of money. He bought a small vessel and went
into the Newfoundland trade, returning home with his makings, which were
deemed insufficient by his wife. Accordingly he resolved to make another
voyage, and take his sons with him so that his profits might be more
considerable. From this voyage they never returned, and Joanna was left
penniless. She spent the rest of her life expecting the return of her
husband and sons.
It is evident that Hardy chose the name of Jolliff from his counterpart
in real life, an honest, deep-hearted son of Poole, Peter Jolliff by
name, master of the _Sea Adventurer_. Off Swanage, in 1694, with only
the aid of a small boy, he captured a French privateer and made its crew
prisoners of war. He secured royal recognition for this bold act and
received a gold chain and medal from the hands of the King.
To the pilgrim who seeks things of antique beauty and interest on foot,
with staff and wallet, in the old way, I cannot recommend a more
enjoyable route than along the coast from Poole to Lyme, which may be
covered in a week. But to do the thing comfortably ten days would be
more advisable. Here is the itinerary if a week is taken. First day,
borders of Poole Harbour by Studland to Swanage; second day, Swanage to
West Lulworth; the third, Lulworth by Osmington to Weymouth; the fourth,
Weymouth and Portland; the fifth, Weymouth by Abbotsbury to Bridport;
and the sixth, Bridport to Lyme. Should the walker allow himself a few
extra days he might give an extra day to Purbeck, to visit Corfe Castle,
pay a visit to Dorchester, and to give himself two days between Weymouth
and Bridport, halting midway at Abbotsbury.
CHAPTER X
SWANAGE AND CORFE CASTLE
Swanage is a well-known seaside resort, rapidly growing in favour. It
nestles in the farther corner of a lovely little bay, and though in the
rapid extension of rows of newly arisen houses, consequent upon the
development of its fame as a watering-place, much of its old-time,
half-sleepy, half-commercial aspect has passed away, Kingsley's still
remains the best description of this spot--"well worth seeing, and when
once seen not easily to be forgotten. A little semicircular bay, its
northern horn formed by high cliffs of white chalk (_Ballard Head_),
ending in white, isolated stacks and peaks (_The Pinnacles_, _Old Harry
and his Wife_, etc.), round whose feet the blue sea ripples for ever. In
the centre of the bay the softer Wealden beds have been worn away,
forming an amphitheatre of low sand and clay cliffs. The southern horn
(_Peveril Point_) is formed by the dark limestone beds of the Purbeck
marble. A quaint, old-world village slopes down to the water over green
downs, quarried, like some gigantic rabbit-burrow, with the stone
workings of seven hundred years. Land-locked from every breeze, huge
elms flourish on the dry sea beach, and the gayest and tenderest garden
flowers bask under the hot stone walls."
Tilly Whim is one of the attractions here. A short walk by Peveril
Point, Durlston Bay and Durlston Head leads to Tilly Whim, which is on
the eastern side of oddly named _Anvil Cove_, and is the first of a
series of cliff quarries opened in the Portland-Purbeck beds along the
coast. The cliff has been tunnelled into a series of gigantic chambers,
supported by huge pillars of the living rock and opening on a platform
in the face of the precipice, beneath which the waters roar and rage
almost unceasingly. The boldness of the headland, the sombre greys of
the rocks, the rude, massive columns which support the roof of the huge
cavity, the restless sea--all are elements that heighten the scenic
effect of a spot almost unique of its kind. Tilly Whim has been compared
to a "huge rock temple"--like those of India.
Thomas Hardy has left us another interesting description of the Swanage
of bygone days: "Knollsea was a seaside village, lying snugly within two
headlands, as between a finger and thumb. 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."
At the time this was written the steamers were moored to a "row of
rotten piles," but these have long passed away and their place has been
taken by a substantial pier. But, let there be what changes there may,
there will always be quarries in the town; it is one of those primeval
vocations which remain unchanged and unchangeable in the midst of our
changing civilisation. The quarry folk were an exceptionally reserved
and isolated people, and the way their occupation has worked in the
creation of a peculiar race is, while not at all surprising, yet very
remarkable. The quarries have afforded a singular and most interesting
instance of the survival, in full working order, of a mediæval trades
guild of a somewhat primitive type, and even in these days no stranger
is permitted to share in their rights and privileges.
[Illustration: THE FAMOUS TILLYWHIM CAVES
The mine-like entrance, from a photograph taken in 1860]
The right to become a quarryman is inherited from one family to another,
and the admission into the guild is an important ceremony: "The quarries
and merchants have from time immemorial formed a sort of guild or
company, whose rules are still enforced, affecting not only the prices
of work, but determining the whole social position and character of the
people. The Society calls itself 'The Company of the Marblers and
Stone-Cutters of the Isle of Purbeck,' and its meetings are held
annually on Shrove Tuesday in the Townhall of Corfe Castle. Here they
choose wardens and stewards, settle bye-laws and other business, and
determine any difference between members in relation to the trade, or
punish any infractions of their regulations. At these meetings the
apprentices, who can only be sons of quarrymen, are, when they have
attained the age of twenty-one, made free members of this community, on
presenting themselves in 'court' with a fee of six shillings and
eightpence, a penny loaf in one hand and a pot of beer in the other.
Another portion of the business consists in a visit to the old wharf at
Owre, and there renewing their ancient custom of presenting a pound of
pepper to the landlord of the little inn there, receiving a cake from
him, and having a game of foot-ball, which, in connection with this
commemoration of the ancient acknowledgment for rent or use of wharfage,
is called the 'Pepper Ball.' Seven years after taking up their freedom
freemen may take apprentices. The widow of a freeman may take up her
freedom on payment of one shilling, and then employ apprentices and
carry on business. At the annual meeting the sons of freemen are
registered, and are not allowed to work at any department of the
business unless duly registered."
The great majority of the old quarry-owners were members of a dozen
families only, there being just a score of Bowers; Collinses, Harrises,
Haysomes, Normans, Phippards and Tomeses averaging half-a-dozen each;
with Coopers, Corbens, Landers, Stricklands and Bonfields not far
behind.
New-comers were much disliked by the quarrymen, and the custom of
"marrying the land" was observed in former days and, for aught I know,
may be observed now. However, we do know that "foreigners" were not
allowed to hold land in the Isle of Portland a hundred years ago, and
the inhabitants, who claimed to be true descendants of the Phoenicians
who traded with Cornwall and Devonshire for tin, kept themselves a
distinct people. In "marrying the land" the contracting parties met at
church, and joining hands the one who handed over the property simply
said: "I, Uncle Tom" (the surname was never used by the quarry folk),
"give to thee, Cousin Antony, such-and-such land." The clergyman then
placed his hands over the others, and the contract was concluded.
As I have said, the old-world village of Swanage has altered much, and
has become a town, and since the opening of the branch railway from
Wareham in the latter end of the eighties of the nineteenth century the
ancient customs and characters of those unhurried, simpler, happier days
have been swept away. The calming quietude of the quaint old stone
houses is now disturbed by ugly, modern erections of red brick. But the
quaint cottages, solid in great stone slabs and stone tiles, still
breathe the true artlessness of the quarry folk. They are an instance of
provident care and sound workmanship defying the neglect of a hundred
successive tenants. The High Street of Old Swanage, which rises uphill
from the Ship Hotel towards the church, traversing the centre of the
town from east to west, seems saturated with human influence and has a
flavour all its own. Half-way up the street on the right is the Town
Hall, with an ornate façade which once formed part of the Mercers' Hall
in London, designed by Sir Christopher Wren. A few yards down the
side-turning by the hall can be seen, on the left, an even greater
curiosity, the Old Lock-Up, of stone, "erected," as an inscription
records, "for the prevention of wickedness and vice by friends of
religion and good order, A.D. 1803."
On the left is Purbeck House, a low, private residence, built by a
"local Mæcenas," the late Mr Burt, the contractor, in 1876. The fish
vane, of burnished copper, formerly adorned Billingsgate Market, and
the wall fronting the street is faced with granite chips from the Albert
Memorial, Hyde Park.
When we reach the highest point of the main street the hill pitches down
to the right, and we look upon a prospect of the town with a character
of its own, not unworthy of observation, in which the sturdy,
square-towered church is a striking feature. To the left is a mill-pond,
which begins to wear the airs of history and reflects in the unruffled
lustre of its waters the inverted images of some very quaint houses
built of grey stone and almost entirely overspread with fungi and moss.
The lower walls of stone are black and polished with the leaning of
innumerable shoulders, and the steps of the external stone stairways are
worn into gullies by the tread of generations. The extraordinary "yards"
and byways are also worthy of attention. A few downward steps will bring
the pilgrim to St Mary's Church, which was rebuilt in 1859. The parish
registers date back to 1567, and the tower is thought to be Saxon. At
this church Ethelberta Petherwin, in _The Hand of Ethelberta_, is
secretly married to Lord Mountclere, and her father and brother arrive
too late to interfere with the ceremony.
A walk along the Herston Road brings us to Newton Manor, one of the old
Dorset manor-houses. The only relics of the ancient building are an
Elizabethan stone fireplace in the kitchen and the barn of the old
homestead, with an open timber roof, which has been converted into a
dining-hall. In the latter is a fine carved stone chimneypiece brought
from a Florentine palace.
A favourite excursion from Swanage is a trip to Studland. Any native
will direct the pilgrim to the footpath way to the "Rest and be
Thankful" seat at the top of Ballard Down, where one can take a
well-beaten track to the entrance of the village. At the remains of an
old cross bear to the right and follow a picturesque "water lane" to the
shore. Studland is one of the most charming villages in England, and the
church is one of the most notable in Dorset. It is an admirable example
of intact Norman work, and its chief details are perfect--including a
quaint corbel table in the nave, font, and moulded arches with carved
capitals.
The celebrated Agglestone is about a mile away on Studland Common. It is
a huge fragment of the iron-cemented sandstone of the locality, raised
on a mound above the heath. It has been regarded as a Druidical
memorial, but though that idea may now be considered exploded,
associations still attach to it, since we are told "the name Agglestone
(Saxon, _halig-stan_=holy stone) certainly seems to show that it was
erected for some superstitious purpose." The country people call it the
_Devil's Nightcap_, and there is a tradition that his Satanic Majesty
threw it from the Isle of Wight, with an intent to demolish Corfe
Castle, but that it dropped short here! How it comes to be poised here
has puzzled the archæologist, but it has been explained as being simply
a block that has been insulated by process of nature, the result of its
protecting from the rigours of wind and rain the little eminence which
it caps.
Corfe is six miles by road from Swanage by way of Langton Matravers, a
village of sombre stone houses, which is occupied by workers in the
neighbouring stone quarries. The place-name "Matravers" is identified
with the family of Maltravers, one of whom was the unworthy instrument
employed by Mortimer and Queen Isabella in the murder of Edward II. This
member of the family having turned out to be such a particularly "bad
Travers," his descendants sought to hide their evil reputation by
dropping the "l" out of their name.
[Illustration: CORFE CASTLE
From a photograph taken in 1860, showing the old Greyhound Inn, with
projecting porch and a capacious room poised above it. The
picturesqueness and solid comfort of this inn, built three hundred years
ago, remains unimpaired to this day]
The "Old Malt House," which is now a school, is a fine specimen of the
old-time stone building, and one can still trace bricked-in windows,
where the sacks were hoisted in to the malt floors. Passing Gallow's
Gore Cottages we come to Kingston, which is two miles from Corfe Castle,
and is pleasantly situated on an eminence which commands a good view of
the surrounding country. Encombe, the seat of the Eldons, is about two
miles to the south-west and is the Enckworth Court (Lychworth Court in
early editions) of _The Hand of Ethelberta_. The house lies deep down in
the beautiful valley of Encombe, which opens out to the sea, with fine
views in almost every direction. This valley is known as the Golden
Bowl, by reason of the fertility of the soil. A short distance from
Kingston may be seen the remains of the old manor-house of Scowles.
* * * * *
On the morrow, when I stepped out under the famous porch chamber of the
Greyhound Hotel, Corfe wore her bright morning smile. The air was soft,
warm and redolent with the scent of good blue wood smoke. Corfe is one
of the pleasantest villages in Dorset and has a wonderfully soothing
effect upon the visitor. I should recommend this old-world retreat for
those who are weary of the traffic and frenzy of the city market-place.
The prevailing colour of the old houses makes the place ever
cool-looking and lends the village an air of extreme restfulness. From
the humblest cottage to the Town House opposite the village cross the
buildings are of weather-beaten stone, and are a delicate symphony in
the colour grey, the proportions also being exactly satisfying to the
eye. Stone slabs of immense size form the roofs themselves. Look at the
roof of the Greyhound Inn! When these roof stones were put down the
builder did not put them there for his own day, selfishly, but for
posterity. This, as Hilaire Belloc would say, is a benediction of a
roof, a roof that physically shelters and spiritually sustains, a roof
majestic, a roof eternal. A walk through the town will reveal Tudor
windows, quaint doorways and several eighteenth-century porches, of
which that at the Greyhound is the best example. The market-place, with
the Bankes Arms Hotel at one end, the Greyhound backing on to the castle
and the castle and hills peering over the roof tops of the town, gives
one a mingled pleasure of reminiscence and discovery. Standing back a
little from the Swanage road is the small Elizabethan manor-house of
Dackhams or Dacombs, now called Morton House, and one of the best
manor-houses in the country. The ground plan forms the letter E, and it
has a perfect little paved courtyard full of flowers.
Corfe Church was rebuilt in 1860, but it preserves some historic
continuity in its tower, which dates from the end of the fourteenth
century. The churchwardens' chest in the porch was made in the year
1672, and Hy Paulett, who made it, was paid the magnificent sum of eight
shillings. And did Hy Paulett go often to the Greyhound and allay his
thirst in the making of it? A man would require good ale to make such a
"brave good" chest as this. And can they make such chests in these days?
Lord knows!... Anyhow, there is something in such a piece of work which
appeals to me--something which seems to satisfy the memories in my
blood. The clock dates from 1539. Curfew is tolled in Corfe daily, from
October to March, at 6 A.M. and 8 P.M. Hutchins, writing at the end of
the eighteenth century, tells us that the people of Corfe were of an
indolent disposition, and goes on to say that "the appearance of misery
in the town is only too striking." Perhaps they "mumped" around and
watched Hy Paulett work laboriously on the church chest and became
downcast when he only received eight shillings for it. However, the
morality of Corfe should have been high, for the churchwardens appear to
have been very exacting in the matter of Sabbath observance. In the
quaint old church records, which date from 1563, are many interesting
references to the offenders in this respect:
"1629. We do Present William Smith for suffering two small Boys to
have drink upon the Sabbath day during Divine service.
_Item._ We do Present John Rawles for being drunk on the Sabbath
day during the time of Divine service.
_Item._ We Present the Miller of West Mill for grinding on the
Sabbath day.
_Item._ We do Present John Pushman Anthony Vye and James Turner for
playing in the Churchyard upon the Sabbath day.
1630. We do Present William Rawles for sending his man to drive
upon the Sabbath day.
_Item._ We do Present James Turner and George Gover for being
drinky on the Sabbath day during the time of Divine service."
The reader will note that the churchwardens at Corfe were blessed with a
very keen sense of moral acumen and split hairs over the degrees of
inebriation. They found it intolerable to write a man down as
intoxicated who had "half-a-pint otherwhile," so they merely entered him
in their records as "drinky"; while, on the other hand, the man who was
vulgarly concerned in liquor was described as a plain "drunk."
According to an old rhyme the man who killed a fox was a great
benefactor and was considered as rendering a service a hundred and sixty
times more important than the man who killed a rook.
"A half-penny for a rook,
A penny for a jay;
A noble for a fox,
And twelve pence for a grey."
But a noble has not always been the reward of the wily rustic who could
entrap Reynard, and the churchwardens of Corfe were certainly a little
niggardly in their disbursements:
s. d.
"1672 Paid Richard Turner for a Pole-Cat 0 4
Paid for three Fox Heads, 1s. each 3 0
1691 Margaret White, Son, for a Hedge-Hog
head 1 0
Paid for one dozen Sparrow Heads 0 2
1698 June 22nd--
It was then agreed by the Parishioners of Corfe Castle met in the
Parish Church that no money be paid for the heads of any vermin by
the Church Wardens unless the said heads be brought into the Church
yard within one week after they are killed and exposed to Public
View."
By the last entry it will be seen that the parishioners of Corfe were
determined to get their money's worth, and the old churchyard must at
times have contained quite a large collection of fur and feather.
Speaking of rewards for the extermination of the fox, I am reminded of
an entry in the Holne Churchwardens' accounts for 1782 which has a tinge
of sly humour about it. Four shillings and two pence is paid for
"running a fox to Okehampton." We can imagine the good churchwardens of
Holne rubbing their hands and congratulating themselves on having got
rid of Reynard, or speculating over future raids on domestic fowls in
the Okehampton district. But the churchwardens were not too hopeful;
they were a little doubtful. As "dead men rise up never," so a dead fox
would not come prowling home again. So they talked the matter over and
decided that half the customary noble would be a fitting remuneration to
the hunter away of the fox.
I cannot leave Corfe without saying a few words in praise of the
Greyhound Inn. Here the beams of the roof are black oak and squared
enormously, like the timbers of a mighty ship, and some of the odd, low
doorways remind one of the hatchways in a vessel. Visitors have so often
knocked their heads against the low doors that it has been necessary to
paint in large letters above several of them, "MIND YOUR HEAD." In the
little smoke-room at the back one might fancy himself on board a ship in
strange seas--especially does one experience this sensation in the
evening before the candles are carried in. If it is wintertime the
impression is more intense--the wind howls and worries at the window and
the sky is swept clean in one broad, even stretch; then one may call
for a pint of Romsey ale, fill the pipe and enjoy the lonely kingdom of
the man at the helm of a great vessel. When morning comes this same
little room is bright and cheerful. The window looks out on a narrow
courtyard paved with mighty stones, and Corfe Castle, which thrusts
itself into every view of the town, fills the background. In the winter
the rustics sit about the board in this room, but they do not come there
in summer, being shy of visitors. The labourers seldom wear the smocks,
made of Russian duck, which their fore-elders were so inclined to
favour. These smocks were much more stout than people would imagine, and
the texture was so closely woven and waterproof that no rain could run
through it.
* * * * *
Four miles of a good, comfortable road running through a breezy
heathland brings the pilgrim from Corfe to Wareham. On these heaths
large quantities of white clay are dug up and run in truckloads to fill
vessels in Poole Harbour. This clay is used for making pipes and in the
manufacture of china. The clay pits are a very ancient and uninterrupted
industry, and they have been worked continuously since the Romans
discovered them. The spade of the Dorsetshire labourer still
occasionally turns up fragments of Roman pottery made from this
identical clay. When Stoborough, now a mere village, once an antique
borough, is reached we come within sight of Wareham, which is entered
across a long causeway over the Frome marshes. More life can be seen in
an hour here by the Frome than in a whole long day upon the hills. I
have noticed how the birds that fly inland, high above me, will follow
the river as a blind man feels his way, by natural impulse. Over the
water-meadows the peewits are twisting in eccentric circles, and
everywhere in the reeds the little grey-brown, bright-eyed
sedge-warblers are flitting about. It seems almost incredible that such
a small bird as the sedge-warbler can produce such a torrent of sound.
For a right merry, swaggering song, which, without being very musical,
is indeed exhilarating, commend me to the sedge-warbler. He sings all
the day long, and often far into the night, and even if he wakes up for
a few seconds when he has once settled down to sleep he always obliges
with a few lively chirrups.
The ancient town of Wareham has been alluded to somewhat contemptuously
by several writers as "slumberous" and dull. Perhaps it is, although it
is brighter in appearance than some towns near London that I know. At
all events its stormy youth--in the days when London itself was but a
"blinking little town"--has entitled it to a peaceful old age. All the
scourges against which we pray--plague, pestilence, famine, battle,
murder and sudden death--have been endured with great strength of mind
and calmness by the people of the town. Sir Frederick Treves tells us
that its history is one long, lurid account of disaster, so that it
would need a Jeremiah to tell of all its lamentations. However, an
indomitable temper and a readiness to believe that to-morrow will be
brighter than to-day is the prevailing spirit of her people, and the
town has an incredible hold upon life and the grassy ramparts which
almost encircle it. The ramparts, or town walls, are ten centuries old,
and form three sides of an irregular square, and enclose, together with
the Frome, an area of a hundred acres. Before the silting up of Poole
Harbour the sea came nearer to its walls than it does now and the river
was much wider. We learn from ancient records that a great swamp
stretched seawards from the foot of the ridge. That Wareham was a port
of a kind is probable enough, for it furnished Edward III. with three
ships and fifty-nine men at the siege of Calais. As far back as one can
follow the ancient records of the town a good number of ships called
here, and when one comes out on the ample quay it is clearly seen that
this place has once been a lively and animated wharf, resounding to the
clatter of sea-boots and the songs of the chanty men. The waterside
taverns and huge storehouses on the boat-station speak of the brave days
gone by, and I cannot imagine a more pleasant spot to linger in on a
sunny day. The seats and tables outside the Rising Sun and New Inn are
very inviting, and when I passed this way it gave me peculiar pleasure
to spend an hour here, looking broadly about me. As I looked across the
quay to the grey bridge, meadows and beautiful fertile valley the odours
and sounds of the country cropped up around me. The sun, laying a broad
hand on the river, had smoothed all the eddies out and was sending it
between the banks, not bubbling loud, but murmuring softly. Yes, the
river was very sleepy that day. However, the Frome has its share of
living interests. Here one can see the heron as he stands upon the
shallows waiting till an eel shall move in the mud. A melancholy-looking
fellow he looks, too, as he stands, gaunt and still, brooding some new
spell. Anon a small bubble rising in the shallows, followed by a slight
turbidness of the water around it, attracts the watcher. A swift step or
so, a lightning flash of his sharp beak and he has secured his eel. One
watches him rising with labouring wings in a direct upward flight, the
eel writhing in fruitless efforts to escape.
The summit of the town wall is used as a promenade, and one part of the
west rampart, looking across the heath to the Purbeck Hills, is called
the "Bloody Bank." Here were executed, by order of Judge Jeffreys, some
of Monmouth's unfortunate adherents. Their bodies were cut up and placed
on the bridge, and their heads were nailed to a wooden tower in the town
on the completion of the execution. Here, too, Peter of Pomfret was
hanged. He was a queer, cranky fellow and it appears that he was given
to drawing horoscopes and meddling with secret and hidden things. He
would have been quite free from any trouble had he not ventured to read
in the scheme of the twelve houses of the Zodiac the fortune of King
John. He read, "under a position of heaven," that the King's reign would
end on Ascension Day, 23rd May 1213, and this prophecy reached the ears
of the King, who had little faith in the sayings of Peter. However, the
King made up his mind that Peter's reign should end on this date, and he
passed the unfortunate prophet on to Corfe Castle, where, we may be
certain, he was carefully looked after. The 23rd of May passed the same
way as other long-lost May-days and pay-days have passed, but King John
was still very lively and active, and to convince Peter of Pomfret that
he was a poor soothsayer he ordered the fellow to be whipped at the back
of a dung-cart from Corfe to Wareham, where a gallows had been erected
to welcome him. At Wareham Peter was driven through the streets,
followed by a crowd of yelling, bloodthirsty people, and then hanged
from the Bloody Bank, with the heather-covered moor before his eyes and
the sky full of birds twittering and flying above his head.
The name Wareham is Saxon. Wareham=Wearth-ham--"the dwelling on the
'land between two waters'" (one of the meanings of _wearth_ or _worth_),
a name descriptive in the fullest sense of the position of the town
betwixt the Frome and Piddle. Certainly the history and importance of
Wareham dates back to Saxon days. However, on the strength of a stone
built into the north aisle of St Mary's Church, which bears the
inscription: "Catug c ... (Fi) lius Gideo," this foundation has been
presumed to be of the British period, a bishop bearing the name of
Cating having been sent from Brittany in or about 430. It is concluded
that this stone is the record of a consecration performed by him.
Beohrtric, King of Wessex, is said to have been buried at Wareham, and
here for a time lay the body of Edward the Martyr. Wareham was a
favourite landing-place of the Danes, and despite its vicissitudes was
important enough to sustain two sieges in the wars of Stephen and Maud,
to be twice taken and once burnt. Wareham was once the chief port of
Poole Harbour; but while Poole flourished Wareham decayed. Unlike other
Dorset towns it stood by the Cavaliers, but as the inhabitants were
lacking in martial skill and a sufficient body of troops, the town was
made a kind of shuttlecock by the contending parties. The last
misfortune of the town was its almost total destruction by fire in 1762.
All things considered, it is little wonder, therefore, that in spite of
its age Wareham has so few antiquities. The castle has left but a name,
the priory little more; but reconstruction has spared the most
interesting feature of St Mary's Church--the Chapel of St Edward--which
is said to indicate the temporary burial-place of Edward the Martyr,
whose marble coffin is now to be seen near the font.
If we follow the road from where the town is entered across the
picturesque old bridge we pass the Black Bear, a spacious old inn, with
an excellent effigy of Bruin himself sitting grimly on the roof. The Red
Lion is the inn mentioned by Hardy in _The Hand of Ethelberta_. The
queer ivy-covered little Chapel of St Martin, on the left side of the
main street, at the top of the rise from the Puddle, is visited by
antiquaries from all the counties of England. It is one hundred and
seventy years since regular services were held here. The roof beams are
very ancient and still hold their own without any other aid. The
interior is vault-like and eerie, and about the old place there hangs an
atmosphere which has no affinity with the everyday world, but which
reeks up from long-neglected tombs--a mystic vapour, sluggish and
faintly discernible. An inscription on the north wall is to the memory
of a surgeon, his wife and four children. The surgeon died in 1791, at
the age of eighty-one, from an "apoplectic fit." It is rather a puzzle
why the doctor was buried in this church, for in 1791 no parson had
officiated here for fifty years or more. The pilgrim will be interested
in the _Devil's Door_, by the altar, a memory of early Christian
superstition. It was the custom to open this door when the church bells
were rung, to allow the devil to flee.
CHAPTER XI
MY ADVENTURE WITH A MERRY ROGUE
Here
With my beer
I sit,
While golden moments flit.
Alas!
They pass
Unheeded by;
And, as they fly,
I,
Being dry,
Sit idly sipping here
My beer.
Oh, finer far
Than fame or riches are
The graceful smoke-wreaths of this cigar!
Why
Should I
Weep, wail, or sigh?
What if luck has passed me by?
What if my hopes are dead,
My pleasures fled?
Have I not still
My fill
Of right good cheer,--
Cigars and beer?
I like inns, and I like old ale, and all the old curious glasses, mugs
and pewters which were so dear to our forefathers, and I begin this
chapter in this way to forestall any possible charges of heresy that my
narrative may call forth. I would almost go further, and say that my
affection for such things is wholly a private matter concerning only
myself, or, at least, no more than a few very intimate friends. That, I
think, is how sentimentalism should be conducted. When it is managed
otherwise, when it becomes a public thing, it becomes a public nuisance,
besides being contemptible. But, as I have gone so far, I might as well
go the length of admitting that I am addicted to the habit of collecting
old drinking vessels, and I have allowed the disease to get the upper
hand. I cannot pass a curio shop in which willow-pattern mugs, tapering
glasses and "leather bottels" are displayed without a burning longing to
possess them. I like to have these things about me, not merely as
ornaments or to drink from, but for---- Well, when I come to think of
it, I cannot quite say; there is not sufficient reason. That is enough
to brand me an incurable curio-hunter. Curios and ancient drinking
vessels are to me what the sea is to a sailor. It is a passion which has
become interwoven with my blood and fibre, and I can never again wholly
break loose from it.
But all this is by the way; the point is, why do I commence this chapter
by talking about such things?
For the reason that in this chapter I am going to tell of a singular
adventure in which a "black jack" loomed very solidly.
It happened at Morcombe Lake. I will not write of this place. You must
get it out of a guide-book, for the village is not a thing for fine
words; it stirred me in no way. But it shall not be said that Morcombe
Lake has not a small share of fame, for in this village is produced the
famous Dorset Knob Biscuit, without which no Dorset table is really
complete. Mr Moores, who "magics" butter, milk and sugar in his small
bake-house and brings forth these golden-brown "Knobs," informs me that
his family has been busy sending them out in tins for over a hundred
years.
I had walked from Bridport, passing through Chideock, with its
venerable-looking church beside the Castle Inn, and coming to Morcombe,
where there is a deep-eaved, comfortable, ramshackle, go-as-you-please
kind of a little inn, I could hear somebody singing inside. It was a
clear, mellow voice, and I listened to the cadences of the song with a
thrill of pleasure. It was a humorous trio, and the lonely singer
changed his voice for each verse with a largeness and confidence in his
vocal powers that quite carried me away. Indeed, it was a song which we
all should know, which runs:
"A little farm well tilled,
A little barn well filled,
A little wife well willed--
Give me, give me.
A larger farm well tilled,
A bigger house well filled,
A taller wife well willed--
Give me, give me.
I like the farm well tilled,
And I like the house well filled,
But no wife at all--
Give me, give me."
Entering, I saw one of the kind of men God loves. He was of middle age,
very honest and simple in the face, good-humoured and cheerful. He was
sitting before a tall, leather black jack--one of the finest specimens
of the old-fashioned leather jugs I have ever seen--quaffing his morning
ale from it. He paused from his song and lifted his wide straw hat in a
grandiloquent way.
[Illustration: The Lonely Singer]
"Good marning, sir! Fine marning's marning! Tez mortel 'ot ta-day," he
said, in a mellow voice, and he looked up at me with large, china-blue
eyes. I passed the time of day with him, but the fine leathern flagon
had already claimed all my attention; I had no eyes for anything else at
the moment. I dealt hotly with speculations over the ownership of the
flagon. Did it belong to the rustic or the innkeeper? Did they know its
value? This and a hundred other thoughts flashed through my mind. As I
stood there I dwelt avariciously upon thought of possession. I said to
myself: "I must have that flagon. I will buy. Beg it. Steal it, if
necessary." The desire to possess it consumed my soul.
"Wantee plaize to take a seat? The cider here be a prime sort, I
shuree!" said the rustic, breaking in upon my thoughts. He spoke very
slowly and, as I have said, had a nice mellow voice, and he did what
only honest men do--looked straight at me when he spoke.
"Surely," I said, and sat down beside him. "Pray excuse me," I
continued, waving my hand towards the leather jack, "but that is a
remarkable old drinking vessel."
"Thickee there is the ownly wan I ever see like it," said he, holding it
up and looking at it with admiration. "Yes, sir, it be a brave good mug,
and I have taken my cider and ale out of he for twenty year. It's just a
fancy of mine to bring it along with me when I drink. I tellee that mug
has been with my folk for two hundred years. Parson says it is just a
'miracle' of an old thing."
"Aha!" said I to myself, "the parson is after it too."
"They tell me," he said, "that it may be worth a pound or two. Well,
well! It is an old friend, and I should be loath to part with the cheel,
but----"
"But," I repeated eagerly.
"But," he continued, "things have been cruel bad with me o' late, and I
have thought, whatever is the good o' keeping it when like 'nuff we can
sell it for a pound or so and buy the chillern a few clothes against the
winter."
"True, true!" I said, trying to keep my excitement undermost. "But you
would only get a few shillings for it, I am afraid. Such things have no
market value."
"No market value?" he answered. "Well, I suppose I dunnow much
't-al-'bout-et!"
He mused for a few moments. I narrowly watched him out of half-closed
eyes--"Oh, yes; I was playing the old grey wolf, sure enough"--and said,
very carelessly: "I should hate drinking my ale out of a 'leather
bottel.' They may look picturesque, but I am certain the beer would
taste vile. I have no sympathy with the enthusiast who sang:
"'And I wish in heaven his soul may dwell
That first devised the leather bottel.'
However, I would not mind giving you a few shillings for it."
I happened to glance up as I said this. He sat there looking at me with
a troubled expression in his blue eyes.
He then said a number of things in broad Dorset, and the "tellees" and
"thickees" and "dallees" became unintelligible, but he meant that I
could but be joking when I said "a few shillings."
"Well, I won't disturb your peace of mind any more," I said. "We will
let the matter drop."
Then he stepped up close to me, put the black jack in my hand, and said,
with an appealing note in his voice: "Two hundred years in my family,
maister. Just say what you've a-mind to give me; only let it be a fair
price. I would not be so anxious to sell it, but my rent is a bit
behind, and I shall have to sleep with Miss Green----"
"Sleep with Miss Green?" I gasped, somewhat shocked.
"Sleep under the hedge, then," he continued, making the expression clear
to me. "Now, you see the fix I'm in, maister."
Then I was ashamed. Deep shame covered me, and I had a great revulsion
of feeling. How could I be so niggardly as to beat down this poor
fellow's price? Perhaps, after all, it was his only possession of any
value at all. I turned the jack over in my hands. It was strong and
black and very highly polished with age--and the curves and proportions
of it were exactly satisfying to the eye that looked upon it. It was a
benediction of a flagon....
I held it up, and said, "How much?"
"Aw! dally-buttons! Take it for two pounds," he said, "you nidden
begridge me that."
And he added, in passing, that two pounds made it a kind of gift to
me--just a token to signify it had changed hands: it was an act of pure
charity on his part.
"Then," I said, "thirty shillings," and he waved his hand about
genially, and remarked that it "twidden" be worth his while to stretch
out his hand for such a paltry sum.
So then I pulled out thirty shillings, and he pushed the flagon over to
me and took the money. Thus the bargain was struck.
So this being settled, and I eager for a drink of ale, called the
innkeeper, who was in another room. Beer was brought and my friend
insisted on paying for it.
I asked him about his wife and children. But I could get very little
from him, and that little in a low voice. I felt sorry for him, for I
understood that parting with his flagon had rather upset him. He seemed
as different as one could imagine from the singer I had seen when I
entered. He told me that his was a very old family in this place, and
his name was Ralph Copplestone. He also quoted the following adage to
strengthen his statement:--
"Crocker, Cruwys and Copplestone,
When the Conqueror came were all at home."
Before he left me, however, he had recovered his cheerfulness. He set
off down the road, and as he passed he began singing:
"Dorset gives us butter and cheese,
Devonshire gives us cream,
Zummerzet zyder's zure to please
And set your hearts a-dream;
Cornwall, from her inmost soul,
Brings tin for the use of man,
And the four of 'em breed the prettiest girls--
So _damme_, beat that if you can!"
Finally his voice, still singing, died away in the distance. I sat
before the flagon with a feeling of wonder, not unmixed with sadness.
The fresh breeze dropped, and it seemed as if the little inn parlour
grew dark and grey. He was a strange fellow!
It was not till the next day, in the late afternoon, when the air was
already full of the golden dust that comes before the fall of the
evening, that I came down Broad Street into Lyme Regis. In passing, I
was attracted by a little curiosity shop. The dusty window was full of
all sorts of things--red-heeled slippers, old bits of brass, quaint,
twisted candlesticks, blue enamel snuffboxes, jewellery--value and
rubbish being mixed in confusion together. And there right in the
fore-front was an exact counterpart of my black jack! It was truly an
amazing coincidence! I looked into the doorway, and saw the owner of the
shop, a very old gentleman. His face was a network of wrinkles, which
time so pleasantly writes on some old faces that they possess a
sweetness which even youth lacks. I made up my mind to seek information
from him about the flagon. He was examining a piece of china with a
magnifying-glass when I entered.
"Good evening--good evening!" he said, putting down the glass, and
looking up at me with a smile. "What can I show you, sir?"
The old man drew in his wrinkled lips expectingly.
"The odd black jack in your window," I said boldly.
The old man went to a corner of the window, and after much fumbling
produced the black jack, which he set upon the counter. As I examined it
he watched me in silence from beneath his penthouse brows. It was,
indeed, a facsimile of the one I had purchased from the rustic.
[Illustration: The River Buddle, Lyme Regis]
"It is not really antique. It is a very clever imitation, not more than
a few months old," came the old man's voice. He paused, the smile still
lighting his face. "A genuine specimen like this one is not to be found
anywhere--outside the museums." He lifted his arm with a peculiar
gesture that seemed to take in the whole world.
Outwardly I remained calm, swinging my foot nonchalantly against the
wooden panel of his counter. If I had burst out laughing that moment I
cannot think what the old curio-dealer would have thought, but it was
with difficulty that I restrained myself from doing so. Little did he
know that I had just picked up a genuine black jack for a mere song!
Then I told him, with gusto, my adventure with the rustic at the inn.
Suddenly he broke out:
"What was his name?"
"Copplestone--Ralph Copplestone," I replied.
"Why, he's the very rogue that sold me this one," said the old man,
shaking his simple head.
"Is that possible?" I said, and I jumped down from the counter where I
had perched myself. The strangest sensation came over me. I thought of
the honest, open face and the innocent blue eyes of my friend the
tavern-haunter.
The curio-dealer smiled quietly, sadly.
"Yes, he imposed upon me, too. He is a very clever rogue. A
harness-maker by trade, and all his people before him for three hundred
years have been of the same calling. So you see the secret of making a
black jack has been handed down from father to son. It is one of the
traditions of his family; a knowledge which is mingled with his blood
and fibre, so to speak. Such skill is older than five thousand years. He
has the spirit of the artist--but the soul of the rogue."
"Why," I said, "then if he is a rogue, then I'm a rogue too, for I knew
I was paying him a paltry sum for an article I thought to be worth ten
pounds--perhaps twenty."
So I laughed, and I've been laughing gloriously ever since--at myself,
at the merry rogue in the inn, at the silly old hypocritical world.
As I passed out of the dim old shop and walked down to the sea it came
over me, with a sudden feeling of satisfaction in my soul, that the sun
shone on Ralph Copplestone just as joyfully as it did on me, that the
good God had endowed him with strong arms and a mighty voice for songs.
"After all," I said to myself, "we are all rogues if we are only
scratched deep enough."
CHAPTER XII
THE DEVON AND DORSET BORDERLAND
"How far is it to Babylon?"
Ah, far enough, my dear,
Far, far enough from here--
Yet you have farther gone!
"Can I get there by candlelight?"
So goes the old refrain.
I do not know--perchance you might--
But only, children, hear it right,
Ah, never to return again!
The eternal dawn, beyond a doubt,
Shall break on hill and plain,
And put all stars and candles out,
Ere we be young again.
"R. L. S."
The irregular and old-fashioned little town of Lyme Regis--"so crooked's
a ram's horn," as the native would say--is situated in a most romantic
position at the foot of the hills, being built in the hollow and on the
slopes of a deep combe, through which flows the small stream of the
_Lym_ to the sea. It is seated on a grand coast, which rises to the east
in the blackest precipices and west in broken crags thickly mantled with
wood. As a port it is most ancient, having furnished ships to Edward
III. during his siege of Calais.
Lyme, in its day, has seen a good many stirring events. In the reigns
of Henry IV. and V. it was twice plundered and burned by the French; and
in that of Richard II. nearly swept from the earth by a violent gale.
During the Rebellion it successfully withstood a siege which was one of
the most important of the time. In 1644 Prince Maurice invested it,
established his headquarters at Old Colway and Hay House, and his troops
along the neighbouring hill. Day after day the assault continued, more
than once by storming parties; but the gallant governor, Colonel Ceeley,
assisted by Blake, afterwards so famous as an admiral, most courageously
repulsed every attack, and after a siege of nearly seven weeks was
relieved by the approach of the Earl of Essex. In 1685 the town was
again enlivened by the bustle of arms, when, in the month of June, the
Duke of Monmouth here landed, with about eighty companions, after
running the gauntlet through a storm and a fleet of English cruisers in
his passage from Amsterdam. As he reached the sandy shore he fell upon
his knees and uttered a thanksgiving for his preservation. He remained
here four days, at the George Inn, when, having collected about two
thousand horse and foot, he set forward on his disastrous expedition.
There can be no doubt that Lyme Regis has failed to prove itself
anything like a popular watering-place; yet it has very good bathing,
with neither currents nor hollows, and has the most picturesque front in
Dorset. The fine scenery should tempt the holiday-maker to suffer the
somewhat enclosed situation, which makes the place very close during the
hot summer days. It is in winter that Lyme should be popular, for then
it can boast a remarkably genial climate.
The quaint old stone pier, called the Cobb, is the real lion of Lyme,
and is the source of much satisfaction to the stout hearts of the town.
The Cobb, "the oldest arnshuntest bit o' stone-work in the land, a
thousand years old--and good for another thousand, I tellee," as
described to the present writer by a rustic, was probably first
constructed in the reign of Edward I. It has been frequently washed
away, and restored at a great price, and was finally renewed and
strengthened in 1825-1826. It is a semicircular structure, of great
strength, the thick outer wall rising high above the roadway, so as to
protect it from the wind and sea.
At Lyme an inn received me: a room full of fishermen and agricultural
workers, a smell of supper preparing, and much drinking of cider. It was
the New Inn, and I was told that this room was only the tap-room and not
usually used by visitors. I found that one wing of the old building had
been specially fitted for travellers, and I will gladly name it to all
my readers who are satisfied with an old-fashioned comfort, a good bed
and good fare.
After supper I bought a packet of sailor's shag, and went out smoking
into the chief street. A few steps took me to the Cobb, and I leaned
over the low wall and contemplated the glorious green sea, tumbling and
gurgling below me. I always think that the union of mighty stone slabs
and the sea is most satisfying to look upon--there is something
endlessly good and noble about such a thing. I think a building of hewn
stone when it dips into the water should act as a sedative to the mind,
should teach one to become calm, slow and strong; to deal generously in
rectitudes and essentials.
It was late in August, and the mellow chimes of the parish church had
just boomed eight o'clock. The great orange moon hung over the bay, and
the night came creeping over the rich yellow sand which crowns the
Golden Cap. Then the cliffs merged into a fainter confusion. Bats came
out and flitted about the old houses by the Buddle river, and the night
became the natural haunt of restless spirits. A candle flickering behind
a leaded casement brought back suddenly the memory of a home long passed
away and whatever blessings belong to my childhood. And all of a sudden
that inexplicable heart-hunger for the place of my birth gripped me, and
Youth (whatever Youth may be), with its sights, its undefinable,
insistent spell, came back to me in one flash--Youth came to me from the
old houses on the sea-wall, borne with the misty saltness of the sea
air. Go away; travel the length and breadth of the land, visit a hundred
cities, encounter a hundred new experiences, and form a hundred
conflicting impressions of stranger scenes and places; go where you
will, and do what you will; one day you will have seen and done enough,
and you will find your thoughts turned again to the haunts of Youth.
At the sight of those ruffianly looking old dwellings by the riverside
my memory was carried back to another small seaport town where, long
enough ago, I played at smuggling. Are we not all haunted by certain
landscapes which come back unbidden, not as topographical facts, but as
vestures of the soul? Their enchantment is in our blood, and their
meaning uncommunicable.
Here, where one can smell the smell of venerable wooden fishing boats
and tar, there is a suggestion of the good old smuggling days. There is
a hint of rum, brass-bound sea-chests, trap-doors and deep mouldy
cellars about the Buddle River houses, and the people who inhabit them
are of very settled habits, and the inconveniences to which they have
been accustomed seem to them preferable to conveniences with which they
are unfamiliar. To this day, therefore, they empty slops out of the
windows, burn candles, wind up their pot-bellied watches with large
keys, and attain ripe old age. This curious quarter of Lyme Regis was
once a smugglers' retreat and a favourite spot for their operations. A
stranger visiting the banks of the Buddle could not fail to be struck
with the curiously formed streets, alleys, and passages thereabouts, and
if he secured the good offices of a native to pilot him through the
mazes he would be still further astonished at their intricacy. The
houses are connected in the most mysterious manner, whether from design
or accident, or whether to meet the exigencies of the smuggling trade,
and for the more readily disposing of the kegs of spirits, and bales of
other excisable goods, it is impossible to say. The most reasonable
conclusion to arrive at is that the latter was the case.
The curious name of Cobb has given rise to much discussion. Murray's
_Handbook to Dorset_ (1859) puts forward the theory that it is of
British origin, and calls attention to a barrow-crowned knoll above
Warminster called _Cop_head, and a long embankment on the race-course at
Chester, which protects it from the River Dee, which has been known
from time immemorial as the _Cop_. The length of the Cobb is 870 feet,
and height above the sea-level 16 feet. It combines in one stone
causeway the duties of breakwater, double promenade and quay. The
projecting stone steps, which form one of the oldest parts of the wall,
are known as Granny's Teeth, and are described by Jane Austen in
_Persuasion_. The beach to the west of the Cobb is known as Monmouth's
Beach. The Duke landed about a hundred yards west of the wall. A local
tradition states that when the late Lord Tennyson visited the town one
of his friends was anxious to point out the spot where Monmouth landed,
but the great man impatiently exclaimed: "Don't talk to me of Monmouth,
but show me the place where Louisa Musgrove fell!"
The bridge arch in Bridge Street is considered to be of an age second
only to that of the Parish Church, and is well worthy of inspection. The
Buddle Bridge consists of one arch of large span, thought to have been
built in the fourteenth century, when the bed of the _Lym_, or _Buddle_,
was excavated to an extra depth of eight feet. An ancient Pointed arch
with dog-tooth moulding has recently been unearthed in the basement of a
house abutting on the bridge. The arch is below the level of the
roadway, and it no doubt formed part of a bridge of several arches built
in the twelfth century. It rises from about two feet below the
ground-floor cellar of this house. The arch has been seen by the Rev. C.
W. Dicker, of the Dorset Field Club, who sent to the editor of _The Lyme
Regis Mirror_ the following letter:--
DEAR SIR,--I have just received a copy of last week's _Mirror_,
containing an account of the very interesting archway under Bridge
Street, which I was kindly invited to inspect. As far as I can
judge from the result of my one opportunity of examining it, the
evidence points to the assumption that Bridge Street formerly
crossed the Buddle upon a bridge of several arches, constructed in
the twelfth century, and that the archway in question was probably
the third from west to east. The street at this point is (or was)
obviously supported upon a masonry substructure, upon which the
houses abut. The masonry of the newly found arch is typical of the
middle of the twelfth century, at which time the manor was chiefly
in the hands of Roger of Caen, Bishop of Sarum and Abbot of
Sherborne, a great builder, much of whose work is still to be found
in Dorset. The archway clearly was built to support the roadway;
and as its alignment is exactly that of the larger archway
(apparently of the fourteenth century), under which the river now
runs, there seems little room for doubt as to its origin. Yours
faithfully,
C. W. H. DICKER,
_Vice-President and Hon. Editor
Dorset Field Club_.
PYDELTRENTHIDE VICARAGE,
DORCHESTER.
The Town Hall, at the farther end of Bridge Street, was rebuilt on the
site of the old Guildhall. The iron-cased door, that once led to the
men's "lock-up," and the grating of the women's prison, have been fixed
against the north front wall. This wall is pierced by two arches, with a
doorway to the Old Market, over the gateway of which is a carved
projecting window. Here are the ancient parish stocks, removed from the
church. At the farther end, facing Church Street, a wide gable stands
out, lighted by an old but plainer window. In the lower part is the
passage through to the Gun Cliff, with a flight of steps in the wall,
leading down to the beach. From Church Street there is an easy approach
to the Drill Hall, which was opened in 1894. On the opposite side of the
street, and directly facing Long Entry, there is "Tudor House," a large
old house possessing much fine oak panelling and carving. The interest
of Tudor House is twofold, for it is associated with the "Father of
English Literature," Henry Fielding, author of _Tom Jones_. Here lived
Sarah Andrew, a rich heiress, when Fielding became wildly enamoured of
her. This love affair was opposed by Andrew Tucker, who was Sarah's
guardian, but Fielding persisted in his suit with such energy that
Tucker had to appeal to the Mayor of Lyme to be protected from the
violence of Fielding and his men. This is recorded in the town journals.
Fielding lost the rich heiress, but immortalised her memory in the
supremely beautiful character of Sophia, in _Tom Jones_.
The Parish Church, dedicated to St Michael, contains some interesting
relics. A prominent feature is the carved Jacobean pulpit and
sounding-board, bearing in capitals the inscription: "TO GOD'S GLORY
RICHARD HARVEY MERCER AND MERCHANT ADVENTURER THIS ANNO, 1613." It was
removed from a column near the south door and entrance to the vestry
during the renovation of the church by Dr Hodges, in 1833.
The building dates from the fifteenth century, though it is clear from
town records that a church stood near or on the spot in 1298, and there
are remains of a Norman arch and pillar in the west porch. Note the two
parish chests, one of Jacobean workmanship. The following interesting
inscriptions are from six of the bells which were set up in 1770:--
1. "O Fair Britannia Hail." T.B. f., 1770.
2. "Harmony in sound and sentiment." T.B. 1770.
3. "O be joyful in the Lord all ye lands." T.B. f., 1770.
4. Re-cast in 1843. Thomas Mears, founder, London. Fredk. Parry
Hodges, vicar. Robert Hillman, Mayor. John Church and George
Roberts, churchwardens.
5. "O sea spare me." This peal of bells was erected partly by rate
and part by subscription in the year 1770.
6. "_Pro Religione, pro Patria, pro Libertate._" 1770. Mr Tuff and
Mr Tucker, C. W. Thomas Bilbie, _Fecit_.
The curfew is still rung at eight o'clock at Lyme Regis.
Fuller details of the history of the church and town will be found in a
very comprehensive little _History of Lyme Regis_, by Cameron, which is
published by Mr Dunster at "The Library" in Broad Street.
Broad Street, leading downwards from the station to the sea, is the main
thoroughfare, and the principal business part of the town. Half-way up
the street on the eastern side is a small passage leading to an ancient
forge. It is scarcely to be noticed unless one is expressly seeking for
it, but once up the narrow court there it is, with its open doorway all
red inside like a wizard's cave, with the hammers ringing on the anvil,
and the sparks showering out of the big flue. Here Vulcan has toiled,
moiled and, let us hope, aled for five hundred years without a break,
and here, in spite of cheap machinery, Mr Govier, the master smith of
Lyme Regis, still seems to enjoy a regular and ready custom. The forge
has been in Mr Govier's family for three hundred years, and it has a
great weather-beaten wooden-and-tile roof, which is all but on the verge
of collapse. A long sweep of old oak wood controls the bellows, and as
you look in you will see the hand of Govier himself is on the bellows
handle. He draws it down and lets it up again with the peculiar rhythmic
motion of long experience, heaping up his fire with a cunning little
iron rake, singing a most doleful song to himself all about "shooting
his true love at the setting of the sun." But you must not think the
master smith is a gloomy man, for this song (and other still more
pathetic ones) is just a tune of acquiescence to his labours--a song in
sympathy with the roar of the bellows and the ascending sparks of his
fire.
[Illustration: THE MASTER SMITH OF LYME REGIS]
"Come in, come in," he said, when I told him I had come to pay my
respects to him.
He turned from his forge, set his hands on his hips and looked at me a
moment. Then I realised why McNeill Whistler spent so much of his time
in this forge making sketches of the smith. He looked like Vulcan's very
brother, his face sunburnt and forge-burnt to wheat-colour, his eyes
blue as cornflowers, and his hair black and crisp, and everywhere about
him the atmosphere of the blacksmith. There are all kinds of interesting
things in the old forge, from Roman horseshoes to plates for
race-horses, and a pair of old beam-scales dated 1560. These scales have
been hanging up as far back as Govier and his father before him could
remember. Besides having the knowledge of a craftsman, Govier is a
singer of old songs.
"That song you were singing when I came in?" I asked. "I know it as well
as anyone, but somehow it has escaped me."
"Ah!" said the master smith. "Well, well! It is years ago now that I
first heard it, when the ships came inside our walls with coal and took
away stone. We rarely see a ship in our walls now, but when I was a boy
my father and I frequently went down to the quay to repair ironwork
aboard the old sailing boats. Those old Devon sailors were the fellows
for songs. Upon my soul, I believe sailors no longer sing as they once
did. I find a great difference between the old-fashioned chanty man and
the modern seaman who never sings at his work. The man who sings loudly
and clearly is in good health, prompt, and swift to the point, and his
heart is as big as parson's barn. The silent sullen fellow may have
these qualities--he may have 'em, I say; but then the chap who sings is
the happier man."
"But there are some miserable fellows who reckon to be very happy," I
said.
At this Govier gave a shrug of his ox-like shoulders, and waved away all
such sorry triflers.
"There are such people," said he; "but they are not entertaining.
However, you want to get the hang of that song, and though I cannot
remember the exact words I have the rhythm of it in my head right
enough, and I think it runs like this:
"'Come all you young fellows that carry a gun,
Beware of late shooting when daylight is done;
For 'tis little you reckon what hazards you run,
I shot my true love at the setting of the sun.
In a shower of rain, as my darling did hie
All under the bushes to keep herself dry,
With her head in her apron, I thought her a swan,
And I shot my true love at the setting of the sun.
In the night the fair maid as a white swan appears:
She says, O my true love, quick, dry up your tears,
I freely forgive you, I have Paradise won;
I was shot by my true love at the setting of the sun.'
"You should have heard that song as I heard it on board an old-time
schooner, when the ship's company all banged and roared heartily, and
shouted in enormous voices. When they came to 'I was shot by my true
love' the company would all join together in a great moan, and wag their
heads in a most melancholy way. But there are no songs like that now.
All this complicated machinery in ships has darkened men's minds and
shut out the old songs."
A good many very interesting places may be cleared up by just
trespassing a few miles into Devon when we leave Lyme Regis, and taking
the main road to Axminster, a parish and market town on the River Axe.
St Mary's Church is of ancient origin, and contains some objects of
antiquarian interest. The other churches are modern. South of the town
are the ruins of Newenham Abbey; its history is interesting. Seven miles
north, Ford Abbey affords another attraction. Membury Castle (one mile
south) and Weycroft are ancient Roman or British fortifications. It is
believed that the battle of Brunanburgh, A.D. 937, was fought near here.
The George Inn at Axminster, standing in a plot formed by George Street,
Victoria Place and Lyme Street, is a noble old place with a spacious
courtyard. The barn above the archway at the back of the inn is very
picturesque, with mouldering red and purplish tiles and hand-wrought
iron cleats. Three miles south of Axminster we come to Musbury--it was
to see a thatcher at this village that I was tempted to make a short
expedition into Devon. The ancient Church of St Michael has been largely
rebuilt. It contains many interesting old monuments, chiefly to members
of the family of the Drakes, of Ashe. Musbury Castle is a British or
Roman camp. Ashe House, the former seat of the Drake family, is now a
farm-house. The New Inn is an odd little place, with a grey and shining
stone floor, and windows set deep in thick walls.
[Illustration: DRAKE MEMORIAL AT MUSBURY]
Colyton is five miles south-west of Axminster in the picturesque valley
of the River Coly, and three miles from the sea. The Parish Church of St
Andrew contains much of great interest. The porch of the old vicarage
house should be seen, with the inscription PEDITATIO TOTUM; MEDITATIO
TOTUM, A.D. 1524, over the window. There is an ancient market-house
here. The "Great House" is another old and interesting building. It was
once the home of the Yonge family, and was built in the seventeenth
century by John Yonge, a merchant adventurer who settled at Colyton, but
it has been partly rebuilt, although the portion of the house which
remains suggests something of the old building and contains some
interesting carving. The Duke of Monmouth stayed here in 1680. There are
interesting effigies of the Pole family in their chapel in the Church of
St Andrew, which is fenced off with a stone screen erected by the vicar
of Colyton, 1524-1544. The vicar was also Canon of Exeter, and his rebus
figures prominently on the screen. The great tomb of Sir John Pole,
buried in 1658, and Elizabeth his wife displays elaborate effigies,
while the altar-tomb is that of William Pole, buried in 1587. Near by is
a mural monument to his wife, Katherine, and another to Mary, wife of
Sir William, the historian, and daughter of Sir W. Periham of Fulford.
Both these ladies have their children kneeling round them. The author of
the well-known _Description of Devon_ is buried in the aisle, but there
is no monument. When I was staying with the headmaster of Colyton
Grammar School (an ancient building bearing the date 1612) some twenty
years ago there were representatives of the knightly family of Poles
among his pupils.
In the north aisle is the mausoleum of the Yonge family. Another
interesting monument is an elaborate altar-tomb in the chancel with a
recumbent female figure popularly known as "Little Choke-Bone,"
referring to Margaret Courtenay, daughter of William Earl of Devon, and
Katherine, his wife, sixth daughter of Edward IV. She is said to have
been choked by a fish-bone at Colcombe Castle in 1512.
The Courtenays, Earls of Devon, once held all the land in this
neighbourhood, and their seat was at Colcombe Castle, hard by, for three
hundred years, but Henry VIII. quarrelled with Henry Courtenay, Marquess
of Exeter, and deprived him of his estates in 1538. It is a curious fact
that the parish charities of Colyton are still mostly derived from these
forfeited estates.
The ruins of Colcombe Castle lie about half-a-mile from the town, and
are now used as a farm-house. Near here grows _Lobelia úrens_, the
"flower of the Axe," a rare British flower, in appearance very like the
garden lobelia. Kilmington is said to bear, in the first syllable of its
name, the trace of the great battle fought in the Axe Valley in Saxon
times.
Another interesting excursion from Lyme might be taken to Lambert's
Castle and Ford Abbey. Ford can be reached by rail to Card Junction.
The Abbey is about a mile east of the station. The first long climb out
of Lyme by the Axminster road to Hunter's Lodge Inn is not encouraging.
From this inn the road runs straight ahead along the road to Marshwood,
passing Monkton Wyld Cross, and gradually ascending to Lambert's Castle,
which is eight hundred and forty-two feet above the sea-level. The
Castle is an important British and Roman camp. A fair and horse-races
are still held here twice a year, and a magnificent view over the Char
valley is obtained from this point. Pilsdon Pen can be reached by the
Beaminster Road, which can be picked up two miles north-east from
Lambert's Castle. At Birdsmoor Gate, two miles beyond, is the Rose and
Crown Inn and a crossing of the ways. The road to Ford Abbey and Chard
swings round to the left, but if the pilgrim wishes to view the home of
Wordsworth and his sister, he must change his route and proceed along
the Crewkerne road for half-a-mile until Racedown Farm is reached.
Dorothy Wordsworth described it as "the place dearest to my
recollections upon the whole surface of the island; the first home I
had"; and she wrote with great feeling about the charm and beauty of the
neighbourhood.
Charmouth is a pleasant walk of two miles from Lyme Regis, but the road
goes over a very steep hill at the top of which is a cutting known as
the "New Passage," the "Devil's Bellows," where in windy weather there
is a chance of being carried off one's feet. The village consists of one
long street situated above the mouth of the _Char_, the leading feature
of the view being the heights which hedge in the valley, particularly
those from which the road has just descended. It is an ancient place,
which still preserves the memory of two sanguinary battles between the
Danes and Saxons. In the first the Saxons were commanded by Egbert, in
the second by Ethelwolf. In both the Danes were victorious, but so
crippled in the fight that they were obliged to retreat to their ships.
At Charmouth, too, in the attempted escape of Charles II. to France,
occurred the incident which so nearly led to the discovery of the
fugitive. A plan had been concerted with the captain of a merchantman
trading to Lyme that a boat at a particular hour of the night should be
sent to the beach at Charmouth. Charles rode hither under the guidance
of Lord Wilmot and Colonel Wyndham and rested at the little inn to await
the appointed time. The vessel, however, from unforeseen circumstances,
was unable to leave the harbour, and the fugitive was obliged to give
up the enterprise and to pass the night in the village. The next morning
it was found that his horse had cast a shoe, and the village blacksmith
was summoned to repair the loss. This was a curious fellow, whose
suspicions were aroused on observing that the old shoes were fastened in
a manner peculiar to the north of England. The hostler, who was a
Republican soldier, carried the information to the Puritan minister.
From the minister it went to the magistrate, and from the magistrate to
the captain of a troop of horse, who soon galloped with his men in
pursuit. Fortunately for the king, they took the wrong road, and he
escaped.
The inn at which Charles rested is still standing. Part of it is now the
Congregational Manse. The front of the house has now been entirely
modernised, but the interior has retained all the quaint features of the
Carolean period, and here one may still see heavy ceilings and fine
oak-panellings. In the portion which is now a cottage a large chimney
(which is said to have served as a hiding-place) and the "king's
bedroom" are still pointed out to visitors. Until comparatively recent
times the inn was still providing ale to thirsty rustics and was called
the "Queen's Head," and several old natives can remember when the
landlord displayed a sign on which was inscribed:
"Here in this house was lodged King Charles,
Come in, sirs, you may venture;
For here is entertainment good
For churchman or dissenter."
In 1902 a commemoration tablet was placed on the house. Similar tablets
have been placed on Ellesdon Farm, the George Inn (now a shop),
Bridport, and on the George Inn, Broadwindsor, at each of which Charles
II. took refreshment or a night's lodgment during his passage through
Dorset.
Two lanes, one turning off near the top of the straight descent, and one
just below the church, lead in a few minutes to the sea. The beach is
sand, shingle and rock, and supports a coastguard station, bathing
machines and a few fishing-boats which are launched from the beach.
There are cliffs on each side of the bay, and here the Char, "a small,
irregular, alder-fringed, playful river, full of strange fish such as
inland streams yield not," mingles very modestly with the sea. The river
rises under Lewesdon and Pilesdon, about six miles distant in a direct
line. Three miles north of Charmouth is Corrie Castle (King's Castle),
supposed to have been the camp of Egbert when he fought with the Danes.
The cliffs at Charmouth exhibit a fine section of the strata and abound
in interesting fossil remains. These include the bones of those
colossal reptiles the ichthyosaurus and plesiosaurus, of the
pterodactyl, and numerous fish; and, among other shells, those of the
ammonite and belemnite, which are found in great quantities on Golden
Cap. The lias contains much bituminous matter and iron pyrites, which
have frequently taken fire after heavy rains. At a bed of gravel near
the mouth of the river the remains of an elephant and rhinoceros have
been discovered.
The tourist must look for the relic of the "Queen's Head" next above a
chapel and opposite the picturesque George Inn. I think that the quiet
folk who occupy the genuine inn where the king stopped must often
breathe mild maledictions over the heads of inquisitive pilgrims who
peep and peer into their windows, and I suspect that they have begged
mine host of the George to claim for his house the honour of sheltering
Charles Stuart from the troops. At all events the George is pointed out
to the visitor as the great historical attraction, in spite of the fact
that it was built long after the time King Charles was in hiding in
Dorset.
CHAPTER XIII
RAMBLES AROUND BRIDPORT
I, who am a pagan child,
Who know how dying Plato smiled,
And how Confucius lessoned kings,
And of the Buddha's wanderings,
Find God in very usual things.
Toller Porcorum (Toller of the Swine) has a railway station on the
Bridport branch line and is two miles from Maiden Newton. The name is
explanatory, and great herds of swine were once bred here. The affix
serves to distinguish this Toller from its next neighbour, Toller
Fratrum (Toller of the Brethren, _i.e._ monks), which is one mile from
Maiden Newton station. The mansion of Sir Thomas Fulford still stands
and is a fine instance of early seventeenth-century domestic
architecture. The very first things I noticed about this house were the
tall, narrow, thick windows--windows that any man might look upon with
covetous eyes. Such tall stone-mullioned windows are an enchantment,
and, as Hilaire Belloc says, it is the duty of every man to keep up the
high worship of noble windows till he comes down to the windowless
grave. A building with a thatched roof near the house is a refectory,
and appropriately cut in stone on the wall will be noticed a monk eating
bread.
At Wynford Eagle, two miles south, the church still preserves a curious
tympanum of a Norman door. It shows two ferocious and
unspeakable-looking beasts, who are about to fight. They are said to be
wyverns--which are heraldic monsters with two wings, two legs and
tapering bodies. The most remarkable discovery ever made in the vicinity
of Wynford Eagle was recorded by Aubrey in connection with the opening
of a barrow at Ferndown. The diggers came upon "a place like an Oven,
curiously clay'd round; and in the midst of it a fair Urn full of very
firm bones, with a great quantity of black ashes under it. And what is
most remarkable; one of the diggers putting his hand into the Oven when
first open'd, pull'd it back hastily, not being able to endure the
_heat_; and several others doing the like, affirmed it to be hot enough
to bake bread.... Digging further they met with sixteen Urns more, but
not in Ovens; and in the middle one with ears; they were all full of
some bones and black ashes."
The house of the Sydenhams still stands at Wynford Eagle. On the highest
point of the central gable a fierce-looking stone eagle arrests our
attention, and under it is carved the date 1630.
Rampisham is three miles south of Evershot, and the churchyard contains
an ancient stone cross, the decayed condition of which will test the
patience and ingenuity of those who desire to satisfy themselves of the
accuracy of Britton's description of the sculpture--namely, that it
represents "the stoning of St Stephen, the Martyrdom of St Edmund, the
Martyrdom of St Thomas à Becket, and two crowned figures sitting at a
long table, to whom a man kneels on one knee."
The inn called the "Tiger's Head" is of great antiquity; it has stooped
and settled down with age, and, within, the low-ceiled rooms seem
saturated with influence, and weighty with the wearing of men's lives.
Cross-in-Hand stands on the verge of the down, which breaks away
precipitously to the vale where Yetminster lies. A bleached and desolate
upland, it 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. Differing accounts were given of
its history and purport. Some authorities stated that a devotional cross
had once formed the complete erection thereon, of which the present
relic was but the stump; others that the stone as it stood was entire,
and that it had been fixed there to mark a boundary or place of
meeting.
It was on this stone that Alec D'Urberville made Tess swear not to tempt
him by her charms. "This was once a holy cross," said he. "Relics are
not in my creed, but I fear you at moments." It was with a sense of
painful dread that Tess, after leaving this spot, learned from a rustic
that the stone was not a holy cross. "Cross--no; 'twere 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 hands
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."
Deep down below is the sequestered village of Batcombe. An uncanny story
attaches itself to a battered old Gothic tomb in Batcombe churchyard.
The tomb stands near the north wall of the church, and it is said to be
the resting-place of one Conjuring Minterne, who Hardy in one of his
novels tells us left directions, after having quarrelled with his vicar,
that he was to be buried "neither in the church nor out of it." It is
said that this eccentric injunction was complied with, but the tomb has
since been moved. What deed Minterne had committed that prevented him
from lying quietly in the usual grave like the other good folk of
Batcombe who had departed this life no man can tell. All the rustics
could tell me was they had heard he had sold himself to Old Nick, and
that his request to be buried in such a unique manner was a ruse to
prevent his master "the old 'un" from getting him when he died.
In bygone days the "conjurer" was an important character in the Dorset
village, and he was generally of good reputation, and supposed to be
gifted with supernatural power, which he exercised for good. By his
incantations and ceremonies he cured anything from inflamed eyes to lung
disease. A Wessex dealer in magic and spells is mentioned in Hardy's
story, _The Withered Arm_. He lived in a valley in the remotest part of
Egdon Heath:
"He did not profess his remedial practices openly, or care anything
about their continuance, his direct interests being those of a dealer in
furze, turf, 'sharp sand,' and other local products. Indeed, he affected
not to believe largely in his own powers, and when warts that had been
shown him for cure miraculously disappeared--which it must be owned they
infallibly did--he would say lightly, 'Oh, I only drink a glass of grog
upon 'em--perhaps it's all chance,' and immediately turn the subject."
But to return to Minterne. The present vicar of Batcombe church--Rev.
Joseph Pulliblank--thinks the fore-shortened stone of Minterne's tomb,
which is square instead of the usual oblong, gives some support to the
story of the "conjurer" being buried with his feet under the masonry of
the church wall. The following paragraph is also from some notes kindly
sent to me by the Rev. Joseph Pulliblank:--
"Batcombe Church, originally Saxon, has only two points which testify to
the fact--(1) A Saxon font inside, (2) a small portion of Saxon masonry
worked into the outside south wall.
"In modern times Batcombe was the seat of 'the Little Commonwealth'
settlement founded by the Earl of Sandwich and run on the lines of the
'George Junior Republic' in America--owing to financial and other
difficulties it came to an end during the war."
In the church are wall tablets to the Minterne family: one to a John
Minterne who died in 1716, as well as a John Minterne who was buried in
1592. There is a monument to Bridget Minterne in Yetminster church, who
was the wife of John Minterne of Batcombe. The inscription runs:
"Here lyeth y body of Bridgett Minterne wife of John Minterne of
Batcombe esq., second daughter of Sir John Brown of Frampton Kt.
who died y 19th July Ano Domini 1649."
Which of the ancient possessors of Batcombe can claim the honour of
being the famous Conjuring Minterne I was unable to discover. Little
remains of his history. We only know that he was always kind, and knew
how to ride well, for he once jumped his horse from the crest of the
down into the village, knocking one of the pinnacles off the church
tower on his way. He would not talk much about wizardry, but would
rather sing songs. No doubt Minterne was a very lovable fellow!
In Rudyard Kipling's "Marklake Witches" (_Rewards and Fairies_) the
Sussex "conjurer" is represented by Jerry Gamm the witchmaster, and he
is one of the most striking examples in literature of the rustic
astrologer and doctor. The following charm--a very excellent one,
too--was Jerry Gamm's charm against a disease of an obstinate and deadly
character:
"You know the names of the Twelve Apostles, dearie? You say them names,
one by one, before your open window, rain or storm, wet or shine, five
times a day fasting. But mind you, 'twixt every name you draw in your
breath through your nose, right down to your pretty toes, as long and as
deep as you can, and let it out slow through your pretty little mouth.
There's virtue for your cough in those names spoke that way. And I'll
give you something you can see, moreover. Here's a stick of maple which
is the warmest tree in the wood. It's cut one inch long for you every
year," Jerry said. "That's sixteen inches. You set it in your window so
that it holds up the sash, and thus you keep it, rain or shine, or wet
or fine, day and night. I've said words over it which will have virtue
on your complaints."
Bridport lies two miles inland from the sea and its unheard-of harbour
of West Bay. We first hear of the town in the reign of Edward the
Confessor, when it could boast a mint, a priory of monks and two hundred
houses. In Saxon days it was probably a place of some importance, owing
to the fact of it being the port to the River Brit, but its early
history is without any distinctive mark or important event. When Charles
II. arrived at Bridport in his hasty flight from Charmouth the town was
full of soldiers, but the royal party went boldly to an inn (the
_George_, now a shop, incorporating part of the old building opposite
the Town Hall) and mixed with the company. Every stranger was mistrusted
by the troops, however, and Charles and his suite quitted the town after
a hasty meal. They retired by the main Dorchester road and took a lane
leading to Broadwindsor and so escaped. Lee Lane, a mile to the east of
Bridport, is said to be the actual scene where the royal party retreated
to security.
The first thing the pilgrim will notice when entering Bridport is the
generous width of the streets, and it is a curious fact that the local
industries have left their stamp on the town in this way. The town was
always famed for its hempen manufactures, and it furnished most of the
cordage for the royal fleet in the good old times of "wooden walls." It
was for this reason the roads were made wider--to allow each house to
have a "rope walk." At one time the town enjoyed almost a monopoly in
the manufacture of cordage. Gallows' ropes also were made here, hence
the grim retort often heard in Wessex: "You'll live to be stabbed with a
Bridport dagger!"
George Barnet, "a gentleman-burgher of Port Bredy," in Hardy's _Fellow
Townsmen_, was descended from the hemp and rope merchants of Bridport.
The church is fifteenth-century and contains a cross-legged effigy of a
mail-clad knight, probably one of the De Chideocks. The old building was
restored in 1860, when two bays were added to the nave. Thomas Hardy
waxes bitterly jocular over this piece of restoration: "The church had
had such a tremendous joke played upon it by some facetious restorer or
other as to be scarce recognisable by its dearest old friends."
West Bay and Bridport are scenes in Hardy's tale, _Fellow Townsmen_,
where they are dealt with under the name of "Port Bredy," from the name
of the little River Bredy, which here flows into the sea. The town
mainly consists of one long highway, divided at West Street and East
Street by the clock tower of the Town Hall, which forms the very hub of
commercial liveliness, with the fine old inns and quaint shops about it.
The Greyhound Hotel is a place very much favoured by travellers, and for
old-fashioned fare and comfort there is no inn in England which could
better it. Mr Trump, the broad-shouldered landlord, is one of the old
school, a man of genial humour and generous strength, and his popularity
reaches well over the borders of Dorset. He is a great lover of horses,
and I stood by his side as he surveyed a manifestation of Divine Energy
in the form of a horse of spirit and tremendous power owned by a local
farmer. "Walter" Trump took off his hat to the fine animal and turned to
me, saying: "If there are no horses in heaven I don't want to go there."
South Street turns down to the quay near the Greyhound, and in the
summer traps will be usually found at this corner to take one down to
the sea.
The Literary and Scientific Institute, in East Street, opposite the
Bull Hotel, contains a number of coins and some natural history
exhibits, as well as a library.
The Conservative Club has been established in a fine old Tudor building
in South Street, on the opposite side of which is another ancient house
called Dungeness. At the back of a house on the south side of the East
Bridge is a portion of the old Hospital of St John. The Bull has been
modernised, but it is the Black Bull where George Barnet put up on his
return to his native town, in _Fellow Townsmen_.
Between the Town Hall and the Greyhound is a passage known as Bucky Doo,
which the Rev. R. Grosvenor Bartelot traces to "Bocardo," "originally a
syllogism in logic, which was here, as at Oxford, applied to the prison,
because, just as a Bocardo syllogism always ended in a final negative,
so did a compulsory visit to the Bocardo lock-up generally mean a closer
acquaintance with the disciplinary use of 'the Bridport dagger' and a
final negative to the drama of life."
If the pilgrim wishes to make a pleasant excursion on foot to West Bay
he must take a track that goes round the churchyard and follow the
riverside footpath on the right bank of the stream. Thus we arrive at
Bridport Quay and West Bay. The harbour never became of any importance
owing to the microscopic shingle which has always obstructed and choked
its mouth. Everywhere the pilgrim turns he sees hillocks of this waste
sand which has prevented a willing port from serving its country. The
fact that Bridport was not called upon to provide any ships either for
the siege of Calais in 1347 or for the fleet to oppose the Spanish
Armada may be accepted as proof that the burgesses of the town possessed
no vessels large enough for fighting purposes. So the little harbour
fell into indolence and sluggishness, thus bearing out the truth of the
old saying: "That which does not serve dies."
The place is picturesque in an odd and casual way, and a scattering of
quaint old dwellings contrast with a row of new lodging-houses which are
very showy (rory-tory the Dorset rustic would style them!) in spite of
their affectation of the dandy-go-rusty tiles of antiquity. A little
group of fishermen may always be seen loafing and smoking by the
thatched Bridport Arms Hotel, and the only time these good fellows ever
show any quickening to life is when some barque, taking unusual risks,
allows itself to be towed and winched between the narrow pier-heads. At
such times the spirit of ships and men departed seems to enter into
them, and they shout and heave and sing randy-dandy deep-sea songs, and
use much profanity.
The shingle is part of one of the remarkable features of the Dorset
coast--the Chesil Beach or Chesil Bank, which runs as far as Portland.
Chesil is Old English for _pebble_, the old word being found in
Chesilton in Dorset and Chislehurst in Kent. The pebbles gradually grow
coarser as one progresses in a south-easterly direction, so that in
olden days the smugglers, running their "tubs" ashore, at venture, in
the fog or during the night, knew the exact stretch of bank they had
arrived on by taking a handful of shingle to examine. The attractions of
West Bay are good bathing, good sea fishing and good boating, for the
curious little harbour is a particularly pleasing haunt for amateur
sailors.
There are many pleasant short walks in the neighbourhood of Bridport and
West Bay. Eype is reached from Bridport by field paths passing through
Allington and the Lovers' Grove. A bridle-way takes one to Eype church,
standing on the ridge, whence it leads through the village down a deep
hollow to the beach. Continuing over Thorncombe Beacon, we reach
Seatown, which is a seaside branch of Chideock. "Chiddick," as any
Wessex man of the soil will pronounce the name, is a little less than a
mile inland on the Lyme Regis road. The Anchor Inn at Seatown is an old
place of entertainment I have not personally visited, but a man who
knows his Dorset informs me that it is a place where the centuries
mingle; with black beams in the ceiling, oak settles, shining with long
usage, and ironwork full of the rough simplicity of the Elizabethan
forge. I shall call there next time I fare Dorset way, if only to stand
in the great bay window which looks out to the sea. Such buildings
remind one, not of decay but of immutableness. Perhaps even the summons
of the dark Reaper would not sound quite so sharp in an ancient inn.
There are less perfect places one might die in, and if I had my wish I
would choose to pass away in an inn, where all my regrets would be
arrested by the stamping of feet on the sanded floor beneath, and the
ancient and untutored voices of farmhands and ploughmen singing some
lively song.
CHAPTER XIV
ROUND ABOUT BEAMINSTER
Beaminster is six miles to the north of Bridport, and is reached by a
pleasant walk, passing on the way the little village of Melplash.
It is a sleepy country town, deeply seated among hills, near the
head-waters of the _Birt_, which flows through it. It is a place of some
antiquity, but not remarkable for much, if we except its sufferings by
fire. In 1644, when Prince Maurice was quartered here, it was burnt
completely to the ground, having been fired by a drunken soldier. The
greater part of it was a second time destroyed in 1684, and again in
1788.
Very prominent landmarks of the Beaminster district are Pilsdon Pen and
Lewesdon Hill, two eminences of green sand remarkable for their likeness
to one another. The singularity of their appearance has naturally
excited much attention. Sailors, whom they serve as a landmark, call
them the _Cow and the Calf_; the Rev. William Crowe has sung the praises
of Lewesdon in a descriptive poem, and the two hills together have
given rise to a proverbial saying current in this country and applied
to neighbours who are not acquainted:
"... as much akin
As Lew'son Hill to Pil'son Pen."
These hills command a charming prospect, and Pilsdon is further
interesting as the site of an ancient camp, of oval form, encompassed by
three strong ramparts and ditches. It is the highest point in the
county, nine hundred and thirty-four feet above the sea. Crowe's
_Lewesdon Hill_ was much admired by Rogers, who says in his _Table
Talk_: "When travelling in Italy I made two authors my constant study
for versification, Milton and Crowe."
Beaminster is in a centre of a district famous for its great dairies,
flowers, bees and rural industries, and here is produced the famous
Double Dorset and Blue Vinny cheese which has always a place on the
table of the true Dorset family. The word "vinny" means mouldy; thus
when the rustic thinks his cheese is in a fine ripe condition he will be
likely to remark: "This yer cheese is butvul now; tez vinnied through
and through." The same word is also used in Devonshire for
"bad-tempered," thus, "You vinnied little mullybrub, git out of my sight
this minut!" The large dairies where the cheeses are made are called
"soap factories" by the facetious natives, and one frequently meets
motor lorries grinding up the sharp hills beneath the burden of a
hundred or so freshly pressed rounds of cheese.
In spite of the town's sufferings by fire the grand old church has
fortunately always escaped. It is approached by a lane at the corner of
the market-place. The pride of Beaminster is the old church tower, which
was built in 1520. A native said to me: "Didee ever see zich a
comfortable-looking old tower as that be, and I knaws you won't see more
trinkrums on any church in the county." By "trinkrums" I suppose he
meant the gargoyles, pinnacles and profusion of delicate carvings for
which the gracious amber-coloured tower is justly famous. The church
itself cannot vie with the tower for elegance or magnificence. Indeed
the church is quite a dull-looking place. However, the nave, arcade and
a squint from the south aisle into the chancel are Early English. The
pulpit is Jacobean. There are two handsome monuments to members of the
Strode family and some memorial windows to the Oglanders and other
benefactors. Affixed to the pavement of the south aisle is an early
brass, with this inscription in Old English characters:
"Pray for the soule of Sr. John Tone whos body lyth berid under
this tombe on whos soule Jhu have mercy a patr nostr & ave."
Sir John was a priest, and probably a Knight of Malta, who died in
Beaminster while he was on a pilgrimage through Dorset.
The church is the scene of a "well-authenticated" apparition. Down to
the year 1748 the free school (of which the Rev. Samuel Hood, father of
Admirals Viscount Hood and Lord Bridport, was at one time master) was
held in one of the galleries, and there, on "Saturday, June 22, 1728,"
did one John Daniel appear at full noonday to five of his
school-fellows, "between three weeks and a month after his burial." The
reason was plain when his body was dug up and duly examined, for it was
found that he had been strangled.
Letherbury, about a mile south of Beaminster, is a pleasant walk down
the Brit valley, by the river-side. On the road is _Parnham_, a noble
mansion of the Tudor period standing in a well wooded and watered
demesne. From the Parnhams this estate came to the Strodes, passing
thence in 1764 to the Oglanders. Other old houses in the neighbourhood
of Beaminster are _Strode_, _Melplash_ and _Mapperton_, and the whole
district bears the marks of long and prosperous agricultural occupation
in the old-fashioned days when "squire" and tenant lived and died in
semi-feudal relationship on the estate which the one owned and the other
rented.
Mapperton House belongs to the time of Henry VIII. In the reign of that
sovereign the lord of the manor was Robert Morgan, who had the following
patent granted to him:--"Forasmoche as we bee credibly informed that our
welbiloved Robert Morgan Esquier, for diverse infirmities which he hathe
in his hedde, cannot convenyently, without his grete danngier, be
discovered of the same. Whereupon wee in tendre consideration thereof
have by these presents licensed him to use and wear his bonnet on his
hed at all tymys, as wel in our presence as elsewher at his libertie."
Poor old Robert! Perhaps his Dorset stubbornness had as much to do with
his wearing a "bonnet at all tymys" as the "infirmities in his hedde."
But he was well able to take care of himself, for he built this
beautiful manor-house and recorded the fact in the great hall:
"Robt. Morgan and Mary his wife built this house in their own lifetime,
at their own charge and cost.
What they spent, that they lent:
What they gave, that they have:
What they left, that they lost."
A GLOSSARY OF WEST COUNTRY PROVINCIALISMS
_Abide._ Cannot abide a thing is, not able to suffer or put up with
it.
_Addle._ Attle is a term used in mining, and signifies the rejected
and useless rubbish. Hence an addled egg is an egg unfit for use.
_Aft_, now only used as a sea term, but anciently with degrees of
comparison, as "after, aftest."
_Agate_, open-mouthed attention; hearkening with eagerness. "He was
all _agate_," eager to hear what was said.
_Alare_, a short time ago: in common use.
_Anan._ A Shakespearean expression formerly used by the Dorset
rustics when they wished to have a repetition of what had been
said; but no one now uses it.
_Backalong_, homeward.
_Ballyrag_, to scold.
_Banging-gert_, very large.
_Barken_, an enclosed place, as a rick-barken, a rick-yard. In
Sussex a yard or enclosure near a house is called a "barton," from
barley; and tun, an enclosure.
_Barm_, yeast.
_Bayte_, to beat, or thrash.
"A wumman,
A spenyel,
And a walnut-tree,
The oftener yu bayte 'em
Better they'll be."
_Blare_, to shout loudly.
"Chillern pick up words as pigeons pease,
And blare them again as God shall please."
_Brath_, the ancient Cornish name for a mastiff dog. Perhaps this
accounts for the common expression, "a broth of a boy," meaning "a
stout dog of a boy"--a sturdy fellow.
_Buck_, that peculiar infection which in summer sometimes gets into
a dairy and spoils the cream and butter; a sign of gross negligence
and want of skill, and not easily to be eradicated.
_Bumpkin_, a common term for a clumsy, uncouth man. But whence the
word?--for it is also applied to a part of a ship where the
foretack is fastened down. The word _bump_ means a protuberance, a
prominence: to _bump_ against a thing is a local term for striking
oneself clumsily against it.
_Butt_, a straw beehive.
"A butt of bees in May
Is worth a guinea any day;
A butt of bees in June
Is worth a silver spoon;
A butt of bees in July
Isn't worth a fly."
_Chitter_, thin, folded up. It is applied to a thin and furrowed
face, by way of ridicule. Such a one is said to be "chitter-faced."
The long and folded milts or testes of some fishes are called
"chitterlins," as were the frills at the bosom of shirts when they
were so worn. The entrails of a pig cleaned and boiled are common
food in Wiltshire, and the dish is called "chitterlings."
_Churer_, an occasional workman. Char, to do household work in the
absence of a domestic servant as a charwoman. In Dorset they say
"one good choor deserves another," instead of one good turn, etc.
_Click-handed_, left-handed.
_Cloam_, common earthenware.
_Clush_, to lie down close to the ground, to stoop low down.
_Clusty_, close and heavy; particularly applied to bread not well
fermented, and therefore closely set. Also applied to a potato that
is not mealy.
_Coccabelles_, icicles.
_Condididdle_, to filch away, to convey anything away by trickery.
_Craking_, complaining.
"I, Anthony James Pye Molley,
Can burn, take, sink, and destroy;
There's only one thing I can't do, on my life!
And that is, to stop the craking tongue of my wife."
_Crummy_, fat, corpulent. "A fine crummy old fellow."
_Daddick_, rotten wood.
_Dew-bit_, breakfast.
_Dout_, to extinguish.
_Downargle_, to argue in an overbearing manner.
_Drattle you!_ A corruption of the irreverent oath, "God throttle
you."
_Dubbin o' drenk_, a pot of ale.
_Durns_, door-posts.
_Ebbet_, the common lizard, commonly called the "eft," which may be
a corruption of this word. The word _eft_ signifies speedy or
quick.
_Escaped._ A person is said to be just escaped when his
understanding is only just enough to warrant his being free from
constraint of the tutelage of his friends.
_Ether_ or _Edder_, a hedge; also the twisted wands with which a
"stake hedge" is made. They have a rhyme in Dorset on the
durability of a "stake ether":
"An elder stake and black-thorn ether
Will make a hedge to last for ever."
_Fags!_ or, _Aw Fegs!_ An interjection. Indeed! Truly!
_Fenigy_, to run away secretly, or so slip off as to deceive
expectation; deceitfully to fail in a promise. It is most
frequently applied to cases where a man has shown appearances of
courtship to a woman, and then has left her without any apparent
reason, and without any open quarrel.
_Fess_, proud, vain. "Lukee her agot a new bonnet. Why, her's as
fess as a paycock." Mrs Durbeyfield uses this word in Hardy's
_Tess_.
_Flaymerry_, a merry-making, or what is now vulgarly called "a
spree," but with an innocent meaning, an excursion for amusement.
_Gabbern._ Gloomy, comfortless rooms and houses are "gabbern."
_Galley-bagger_, a person fond of gadding about.
_Gallied_, scared. Jonathan Kail the farm-hand at Talbothay's uses
this word (see Hardy's _Tess_).
_Gallyvanting_, going from home.
"Then for these flagons of silver fine,
Even they shall have no praise of mine;
For when my lord or lady be going to dine,
He sends them out to be filled with wine,
But his man goes gallyvanting away,
Because they are precious, and fine, and gay;
But if the wine had been order'd in a leather bottel,
The man would have come back, and all been well."
_Gigglet_, a merry young girl, one who shows her folly by a
disposition to grin and laugh for no cause. It is used as a term of
slight and contempt, and commonly to a young girl. Gigglet-market,
a hiring-place for servants. From time immemorial, to within the
last sixty years, on Lady Day young girls in Dorset and Devon were
accustomed to stand in the market-place awaiting a chance of being
hired as servants.
_Gu-ku_, cuckoo.
"The gu-ku is a merry bird,
She sings as she flies;
She brings us good tidings,
She tells us no lies.
She sucks little birds' eggs
To make her voice clear;
And when she sings 'gu-ku'
The summer is near."
_Hadge_, hedge.
"Love thy neighbour--but dawnt pull down thy hadge."
_Holt_, hold.
"When you are an anvil, holt you still,
When you are a hammer, strike your fill."
_Hozeburd_, a person of bad character. "Jack Dollop, a 'hore's bird
of a fellow," is the hero of a story related by Dairyman Crick in
Hardy's _Tess_.
_Klip_, a sudden smart blow, but not a heavy one. It is most
usually applied to a "_klip_ under the ear." Of late the word
_klipper_ is grown into use to describe a smart-sailing vessel, one
that sails very swiftly, with some distant reference to the same
idea.
_Knap_, prominent. It is sometimes applied to the prominent part of
a hill; but it is more frequently used as significant of the form
of a person's knees when they are distorted towards each other, and
which some people have chosen to term knock-kneed.
_Lasher_, a large thing, of any sort. The meaning sought to be
conveyed appears to be that this thing beats or excels every other.
The opinion that any object which excels another is able to beat,
_lash_ or inflict violence on that other is a strange but not
uncommon vulgar one.
_Lof_, unwilling.
"Dawntee be like old Solomon Wise--
'Lof tu go tu beyd
And lof to rise.'
Cuz then you'll soon be
'Out tu elbaws,
Out tu toes,
Out ov money,
An out ov cloase.'"
_Main_, very. I remember once hearing a Dorset thatcher say:
"I be main fammled. I be so hungry I could welly eat the barn
tiles."
_Mommet_, a scarecrow. See _Tess of the D'Urbervilles_: "Had it
anything to do with father's making such a mommet of himself in
thik carriage?"
_Nitch_, a bundle of reed, straw or wood. "He's got a nitch"--he is
drunk.
_Peg_, pig. "Tez time tu watch out when you're getting all you
want. Fattening pegs ain't 'ardly in luck!"
At a tithe dinner a farmer in giving the Royal toast said:
"The King, God bless him! May he be plaized to send us more pegs
and less parsons."
_Stubberds_, delicious apples.
"Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?"
"Yes."
"All like ours?"
"I don't know; but I think so. They sometimes seem to be like the
apples on our stubbard-tree. Most of them splendid and sound--a few
blighted."
"Which do we live on--a splendid one or a blighted one?"
"A blighted one." (See Thomas Hardy's _Tess_.)
_Stugged_, stuck in the mud.
"He that will not merry be
With a pretty girl by the fire,
I wish he was a-top o' Dartmoor
A-stugged in the mire."
_Squab pie_, a pie in favour in Devon and Dorset:
"Mutton, onions, apples and dough
Make a good pie as any I know."
_Ingredients._--3 lb. mutton or pork cutlets, 6 large apples
sliced, 2 large onions, ¼ lb. salt fat bacon cut small, 2 oz.
castor sugar, ½ pint of mutton broth, pepper and salt to taste.
Place these in layers in a deep pie-dish, cover with rich paste and
bake for an hour and a half, or place the whole in a crock and stew
an hour and a half. Serve piping hot. I have seen clotted cream
served and eaten with this "delicacy."
_Squab_, the youngest or weakest pig of the litter. The London
costermonger speaks of the youngest member of his family as the
"squab."
_Withwind_, the wild convolvulus.
_Withy_, the willow-tree. They say in Wiltshire, in reference to
the very rapid growth of the willow, that "a withy tree will buy a
horse before an oak will buy a bridle and saddle." The willow will
often grow twelve feet in a season.
_Wizzened_, shrivelled, withered: as "a wizzened apple," "a
wizzened-faced woman."
_Wosbird._ A term of reproach, the meaning of which appears to be
unknown to those who use it. It is evidently a corruption of
whore's-bird.
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