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[Illustration: DORCHESTER FROM THE MEADOWS]


THE HEART OF WESSEX


Described by SIDNEY HEATH

Pictured by E. W. HASLEHUST


BLACKIE AND SON LIMITED
LONDON GLASGOW AND BOMBAY




    Beautiful England


    _Volumes Ready_:

    OXFORD
    THE ENGLISH LAKES
    CANTERBURY
    SHAKESPEARE-LAND
    THE THAMES
    WINDSOR CASTLE
    CAMBRIDGE
    NORWICH AND THE BROADS
    THE HEART OF WESSEX
    THE PEAK DISTRICT
    THE CORNISH RIVIERA
    DICKENS-LAND




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


                                                       Page

Dorchester from the Meadows                   _Frontispiece_

Hangman's Cottage, Dorchester                             8

Puddletown                                               14

Bere Regis                                               20

Portisham                                                26

Weymouth and Portland                                    32

Gateway, Poxwell Manor House                             38

Lulworth Cove                                            42

Wool House                                               46

Wareham                                                  50

Corfe Castle                                             54

Poole Harbour from Studland                              58




[Illustration: _HIGH STREET, DORCHESTER._

                  THE HEART OF WESSEX]




DORCHESTER AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD


As all the world is beginning to realize, that portion of the country
immortalized by Thomas Hardy, in his great romances of rural life,
lies in one of the most delectable regions of south-west England; and
although, for the purpose of giving variety to his scenic backgrounds,
Mr. Hardy has occasionally gone far beyond the narrow boundaries of
his home county, yet for general purposes his Wessex is synonymous
with the county of Dorset. Historically considered the Wessex of the
novels is but partially conterminous with that wherein, after
centuries of bloodshed, our Saxon ancestors established their
Octarchy, and the novelist has explained his reasons for the adoption
of the name "Wessex", which did not appear in any of the novels until
the publication, in 1874, of _Far from the Madding Crowd_. "The
series of novels I projected," he writes, "being mainly of the kind
called local, they seemed to require a territorial definition of some
sort to lend unity to their scene. Finding that the area of a single
county did not afford a canvas large enough for the purpose, and that
there were objections to an invented name, I disinterred the old one.
The press and the public were kind enough to welcome the fanciful
plan, and willingly joined me in the anachronism of imagining a Wessex
population living under Queen Victoria, a modern Wessex of railways,"
&c.

As Professor Windle says: "Whilst peopling these scenes with the
creatures of his imagination, Mr. Hardy has achieved a feat which he
was probably far from contemplating when he first commenced his series
of novels. For incidentally he has resuscitated, one may even say
re-created, the old half-forgotten kingdom of Wessex."

Although there is scarcely any portion of the county that does not
figure in one or other of Mr. Hardy's novels or poems, yet by far the
greater number of scenes lie in the portion called South Dorset,
around and below an imaginary line drawn from a little to the west of
Dorchester to Poole Harbour, and it is mainly with this portion of the
Hardy country that it is proposed to deal in this volume.

Like all the true beauty spots of England, increasing familiarity with
these south-country landscapes deepens their ineffaceable impression
as it multiplies their alluring charms; and, small as is the
geographical extent of this strip of rural England, it yet fills our
thoughts as it delights our eyes; and it is large enough to attract us
by a thousand threads of history and romance, by a hundred beauties of
rolling downs and grassy vales, and of steep chalk cliffs where the
blue waters of the Channel break with a splutter of spray.

For miles one can wander amid such scenes in this fair Wessex land,
where the roses of dawn fade into the infinite azure of a cloudless
sky, and the cool salt breath of the sea-borne air is an elixir of
life. Moreover, these soft sea breezes, that temper the dazzling heat
of the summer sun, waft in their train an unfading wreath of memories
of that antique civilization which existed long before the prows of
the Roman galleys clove the ethereal mists that fringe the Dorsetian
seas.

Mr. Hardy is unique among English novelists in that he writes of
ecclesiastical and domestic architecture with the eye and the
knowledge of a trained architect, and one who took high honours in
this profession before he abandoned it for literature. To this no
doubt are due the descriptions he has given us of the homes and haunts
of his heroes and heroines. Occasionally we find that a house of the
novels has been made up of two or more neighbouring dwellings, at
other times there is some slight transposition of site or locality;
but to all intents and purposes Mr. Hardy's Wessex of romance is the
Dorset of reality, with regard both to its natural scenery and to the
buildings that accompany it. Thus it is that the novelist's
architectonic settings, and his literal descriptions of natural
scenery, make identification a simple task, and lend interest to
numerous old houses and cottages, just as they have immortalized a
thousand scenes of their author's native land.

A few of Mr. Hardy's critics have cavilled at the insistence of the
architect's point of view, just as some of his readers fail to
perceive the genius that lies behind his detailed treatment of
buildings; but there is little doubt that the novelist's artistic use
of technical material has endowed his romances with a personal note of
deep interest, and an architectural one of great value.

Although Dorset has a host of literary associations other than those
furnished by the Wessex novels, and notwithstanding that William
Barnes sang of its charms to deaf ears as sweetly as ever Burns piped
of the North Country, it was left to Thomas Hardy to reveal Dorset to
those who knew it not; although he was writing for a great many years
before his novels began to draw people to the land of Gabriel Oak,
Tess, and Ethelberta.

[Illustration: HANGMAN'S COTTAGE, DORCHESTER]

As the tourist must have a centre, a starting-off place for his
various excursions, the visitor to the Hardy country cannot do better
than make his headquarters at Dorchester, the Durnovaria of the Romans
and the "Casterbridge" of the novels.

Alighting at either of the railway stations, for the town is well
served by both the Great Western and the South Western Companies, the
visitor who has learned that Dorchester occupies the site of an
important town of the Romans will probably receive a shock at the
prevailing note of modernity that confronts him on every side. It is
only when one begins to understand the planning of the streets, and
has visited the town's outlying earthworks of Maumbury and Poundbury,
that the mind can realize the possibility of a Roman town being buried
a few feet beneath the houses that line the narrow thoroughfares. It
has been said that one cannot plant a shrub in a Dorchester garden
without unearthing some link with the legions of imperial Rome, an
excusable exaggeration if we think of the vast number of treasures
that have been discovered wherever the layer of surface soil has been
penetrated; and there is every reason to believe that the foundations
of Roman Dorchester lie just below the gardens, houses, and pavements
of the bright and modern town.

Excavation in the scientific sense the town has happily been spared,
but the accidental finds are of great value, as proving that the
town's historic past recedes into that twilight of dreamland and myth
which veils the infancy of our island in a golden haze of mystery. All
around this capital of Dorset lies a storied land, wherein memories of
the Durotriges, of the Roman legions, and of the ruthless march of the
Saxon through the beautiful land of Britain jostle with modern
associations of poetry, literature, and art.

Proceeding along South Street, as the narrow thoroughfare that
connects the stations with the centre of the town is called, the first
building to claim attention is the Grammar School, founded in the
sixteenth century by a Thomas Hardy, and rebuilt in the same style in
1879. Adjoining the school is "Napper's Mite", a small
seventeenth-century almshouse with a picturesque open gallery and a
clock bracket, copied from the one that adorns the old George Inn at
Glastonbury. The almshouse clock came from the old workhouse near by
when it was pulled down. Farther along the street, but on the opposite
side, is the Antelope Hotel, a Jacobean building whose beauties are
concealed behind nineteenth-century walls, although some interior
panelling and carving remain _in situ_.

Just beyond the hotel the street joins the main thoroughfare of the
town, and at this intersection, where four roadways diverge towards
the cardinal points of the compass, historical memories and literary
associations clamour for recognition. The curious stone obelisk in the
centre of the near roadway, and for many years used as the Town Pump,
marks the site of the old Octagon, and was erected in 1784, which date
is carved in characteristic Georgian figures on the coping stone. It
also marks the site of two houses that stood close together with their
upper rooms built over the street.

Facing us are the Town Hall and St. Peter's Church, the latter of
which is conjectured by some authorities to stand on the site of a
Roman temple. It is a stately Perpendicular building with an imposing
tower and a remarkable set of gargoyles. The Transition-Norman
door-arch of the south porch is a survival of an older church that
once occupied the same spot. Outside the church is Roscoe Mullins's
lifeless-looking bronze statue of William Barnes, the Dorset poet,
who, until his death in 1886, was the near neighbour and literary
friend of Thomas Hardy. The pedestal of Barnes's monument bears the
following verse from his poem, _Culver Dell and the Squire_:--

    "Zoo now I hope this kindly feaece
    Is gone to vind a better pleaece;
    But still wi' vo'k a-left behind,
    He'll always be a-kept in mind."

Within the sacred edifice are several interesting monuments, including
two cross-legged effigies of the "camail" period, but neither of these
is _in situ_. In the porch of this church John White, one of the four
founders of Salem and the virtual founder of Massachusetts, lies
buried.

Opposite the eastern end of the church is the Corn Exchange, where the
fickle Bathsheba displayed her sample bags of corn to the astonished
farmers, "adopting the professional pour into the hand, holding up the
grains in her narrow palm for inspection in perfect Casterbridge
manner". It was in a neighbouring shop that this "Queen of the Corn
Market" purchased the fatal valentine that aroused the amatory
instincts of Farmer Boldwood; while it was but a short distance away
that, a little later in the story, _Far from the Madding Crowd_,
Bathsheba and her husband, Sergeant Troy, met the piteous figure of
Fanny Robin on her painful journey to the Casterbridge workhouse. By
way of Mellstock (Stinsford) and Durnover (Fordington), Boldwood
came to Casterbridge, where, turning into Bull-Stake Square, he
"halted before an archway of heavy stonework which was closed by an
iron-studded pair of doors", and gave himself up for the murder of
Troy. Here also came Gabriel Oak in search of the licence which was to
procure for Bathsheba "the most private, secret, plainest wedding that
it is possible to have".

In the _Mayor of Casterbridge_ the town naturally figures largely,
although the opening scenes of the novel are laid at Weydon Priors
(Weyhill, Hants). In Casterbridge Susan Henchard and Elizabeth-Jane
sought for Henchard

    "What an old-fashioned place it seems to be!" exclaimed
    Elizabeth-Jane, "it is huddled all together; and it is shut in
    by a square wall of trees like a plot of garden ground with a
    box-edging."

It is in this novel that its author gives us, in a few masterly
touches, the architectural details of the town's houses, the
"brick-nogging" and the "tile roofs patched with slate"; and indicates
the everyday life of its inhabitants. The whole town, in fact, teems
with Hardy scenes and characters, and particularly with the story of
the Man of Character who was its Mayor. To Casterbridge came Stephen
Smith when he commenced that study of architecture which led to his
meeting the blue-eyed Elfrida. Bob Loveday, brother to the
Trumpet-Major, came hither to meet his Matilda; and in the courthouse
Raye sat when on the Western Circuit, after he had parted with Anna at
Melchester (Salisbury).

Walking down High East Street the most unobservant eye could not fail
to notice the beautiful distant view of the Frome Valley and the
Yellowham Woods, and to note the number of the hostels on either side
of the short length of street. Prominent among them is the King's
Arms, with a spacious and noble Georgian window projecting over the
main portico. This window, that is at once the delight and the despair
of the modern architect, gave light to the room wherein was held "the
great public dinner of the gentle-people and such like leading
folk--wi' the Mayor in the chair".

Just below this still fashionable hotel is the "Three Mariners" with
its "four-centred Tudor arch over the entrance". The original inn has
vanished, but the present one occupies its site. On the opposite side
of the way stands the "Phoenix", but risen again from her ashes since
it was the scene of Jenny's last