Chapter X: Part 10

Beautiful it is under many atmospheric conditions. One who has risen, and stood in the neighbourhood of the Grammar School, before the dawn of a summer day, and has looked eastward at the long ridge of the downs silhouetted against the sunlit sky, and then a little later has turned to the south-west to look at the line of the houses that run along the crest of the Rock, ending in the two towers of St. Peter’s and Holy Trinity, flushed with the rose of morning, while the soft blue shade holds the valleys below, has seen a sight of surpassing loveliness. Sometimes the hollows are brimmed with thick, white mist, from which the tops of the surrounding hills rise like islets from the sea. Again, the view is splendid when, at noon on a wild, gusty day, heavy masses of clouds are blown across the sky, and their shadows and glints of sunshine chase each other over vale and down. But possibly the most lovely view of all may be obtained by going to Castle Hill on a summer evening when the sun is sinking behind the Somerset hills to the north-west, for the sunsets are “mostly beautiful here,” as Mr. Hardy makes Phillotson say, “owing to the rays crossing the mist of the vale.”[60] But there are other aspects of nature that may sometimes be observed in the hill town and around it—grand and wild when the north-east blast roars over the hill-top, driving before it frozen snow, sweeping up what has already fallen on the fields, and filling the roads up to the level of the hedge-tops, cutting the town off from all communication with the outer world, until gangs of labourers succeed in cutting a narrow passage through the drifts, along which a man may walk or ride on horseback, with the walls of snow rising far above his head on the right-hand and on the left, and nothing to be seen save the white gleam of the sunlight on the snow, the tender grey of the shadows on it, and the bright blue of the sky above—if, indeed, the snow has ceased to fall and the winds to blow, and the marvellous calm of a winter frost beneath a cloudless sky has fallen on the earth. Many may think that such aspects of nature could never be met with in the sunny southern county of Dorset; but the writer speaks of what he has seen on several occasions, when snow has been piled up to the cottage eaves, when the morning letters have not reached the town till after sunset, when even a wagon and its team have been buried for hours in a snow-drift, and the horses rescued with difficulty.

PIDDLETOWN AND ATHELHAMPTON

BY MISS WOOD HOMER

The parish of Piddletown, or Puddletown, is said by Hutchins to take its name from the river Piddle, which flows to the north of the village, though it is supposed to have been formerly called Pydeletown after the Pydele family, at one time owners of much property in the neighbourhood.

It was once a large parish, and the capital of the hundred; but it now numbers only about nine hundred inhabitants, having fallen from fourteen hundred during the last forty years. About the year 1860 the village contained as many as twenty boot-makers, twelve blacksmiths, twenty carpenters and wheelwrights, five pairs of sawyers, two coopers, and some cabinet-makers. Gloves and gaiters were tanned and made there, as were many of the articles in common use. Beer was brewed in the public-houses; and there were three malt-houses, about one of which we read in Thomas Hardy’s _Far from the Madding Crowd_. Naturally, these trades employed much labour, and a great decrease in the population resulted when they were given up, after the introduction of the railway at Dorchester, about the year 1848. Two business fairs were formerly held in the village—one on Easter Tuesday, the other on October 29th—when cattle, materials, hats, etc., were sold. The October fair still exists, but it has dwindled to a small pleasure fair only, though pigs were sold as late as 1896.

Piddletown possesses a very fine church, dedicated to St. Mary. It is a large and ancient building, consisting of a nave and a north aisle of the same length, covered with leaden roofs, and a small south aisle, called the Athelhampton aisle, the burial-place of the Martyns of Athelhampton. This aisle is under the control of the vestry of Athelhampton Church. The chancel has a tiled roof; it was built in 1576. The embattled tower contains six bells.

The chief features of this church are the monuments in the south aisle, with some very fine brasses; the Norman font (some authorities on fonts consider it to be of Saxon work); and the beautiful roof of carved chestnut wood. This latter has been many times supported and restored, and it will, indeed, be a loss to the antiquary when it is found impossible any longer to keep it in repair.

The monuments are all much defaced. One of them, of the fifteenth century, consists of a knight and lady in alabaster on an altar-tomb, probably Sir Richard Martyn and Joan his wife; this has traces of much gilding and painting, but no inscription. To the west of this there is the figure of a knight, probably placed there about 1400. West of this again, an unknown “crusader” and lady lie on the floor under an altar-tomb, with a canopy upon four pillars, which was erected to the memory of Nicholas Martyn; under the canopy there is a fine brass, representing Nicholas Martyn, his wife, three sons, and seven daughters, dated 1595, and bearing an inscription. There is also a smaller brass, on which is a monkey holding a mirror—the Martyn crest—while above the whole are three sculptured martins or monkeys. To the north of the aisle there is a figure of a knight in alabaster, his feet resting on a chained monkey, the whole supported on an altar-tomb of Purbeck marble. On the west wall there is a large tablet to the memory of the Brunes, who owned Athelhampton in the seventeenth century.

On the east of the aisle there is a brass to the memory of Christopher Martyn, with the following inscription:—

Here lyethe the body of Xpofer Martyn Esquyer
Sone and heyre unto Syr Willym Martyn knyght
Pray for there Soules with harty desyre
That they bothe may be sure of Eternall lyght
Callyng to Remembraunce that every wyght
Most nedys dye, & therefor lett us pray
As other for us may do Another day.

Qui quidem Xpoferus obiit XXII^{o} die mens’ M’cii an^{o} D’ni
millmo quingentesimo vicesimo quarto.

Above this there is the kneeling figure of a man in armour, and a partial representation of the Trinity. The figure is holding a scroll, on which the following inscription is much abbreviated: “_Averte faciem tuam a peccatis meis et omnes iniquitates meas dele_”; while before and behind the effigies are the Martyn arms. And on the floor of the church, north of the pulpit, there is a brass to the memory of Roger Cheverell.

A short staircase of thirteen steps opens out of the south aisle; this formerly led to a rood loft.

A musicians’ gallery of the seventeenth century runs across the west of the church, and there are porches on the north and south. The south door has a ring attached to the outside, which is popularly supposed to have been a sanctuary ring, though probably this tradition has no foundation.

It is an interesting fact that the church clock, which was in the tower till about 1865, was made by a village blacksmith, Lawrence Boyce by name, about 1710. This clock had a three-cornered wooden face on the north side of the tower, stone weights and one (hour) hand. It struck the hours and quarters and chimed at 8, 12, and 4, except on Sundays, when the chimes were silenced, so that they might not disturb the worshippers. A clock made by the same man, for Bere Regis Church, is now in the Dorchester Museum; but, unfortunately, the Piddletown clock was not preserved, though it was in good going order when it was removed to make room for the present one.

In 1820, and probably for long before, it was the custom of the members of the choir to write their own music; some was actually composed by them, while some was borrowed from other villages, although the rivalry which often existed between village choirs not infrequently prevented the exchange of tunes. In two vellum-covered volumes, the property of Mr. W. Gover, of Piddletown, dated 1823, the music and words of the Psalms are most beautifully written. The books were given by a certain Mrs. Price to the choir. The larger book belonged to J. Holland, a clarionet player; the smaller to W. Besant. In the latter may be found music headed, “John Besant’s Magnificat,” which was probably composed by one of his ancestors. At this time the choir consisted of two clarionets, two bass viols, a flute, and a bassoon; while before this a “serpent” was used, and the music is written apparently for all these instruments. The violin was prohibited by most clergymen as being “Devil’s music,” on account of its being played in public-houses and for dancing. The instruments were given up about 1845 on the introduction of a barrel-organ. At this time the village also possessed a band, which had been in existence for nearly two hundred years, and of which the inhabitants were justly proud.

Piddletown is perhaps better known as the “Weatherbury” of Thomas Hardy’s _Far from the Madding Crowd_. On the south-west of the church is the gargoyle (the head of some beast, with the legs of a child projecting from its mouth), which destroyed Sergeant Troy’s work at Fanny’s grave. The old malthouse mentioned in the same book stood in what are now the gardens of Ilsington House, while Bathsheba’s house stood on the site of Ilsington Lodge, although it is sketched from the house at Waterson. The latter is a fine old building about two miles from Piddletown, and was the residence of the Martyns before they went to Athelhampton, and remained their property for long after. It was much damaged by fire in 1863, but was carefully restored by the owner, Lord Ilchester, to whose family it still belongs. It is interesting to note that a certain Mr. Bainger, who lived at Ilsington Lodge, was the moving spirit in causing the lowering of Yellowham Hill, between Piddletown and Dorchester, about 1830.

The Vicarage possesses a very fine staircase and an oak-beamed study, while an old farmhouse, now used as a cottage, in “Style Lane,” formerly contained a fine carved mantelpiece. In the churchyard is the headstone of Peter Standley, King of the Gipsies, with the following inscription:—

In memory of Peter Standley, who died 23rd November, 1802, aged 70 years.

Farewell my dear & faithful wife
My sons & daughters too
Tho’ never in this mortal life
Again you must me view
Close in our Saviour’s footsteps tread
Of Love divine possessed
And when you’re numbered with the dead
Your souls will be at rest.

He is said to have died of smallpox in Style Lane, and to have been buried by night. Gipsies still visit the grave.

The old coaching road from London to Dorchester runs to the west of the village, and “Judge’s Bridge,” near Ilsington Lodge, is said to have taken its name from being the meeting-place of the judge and the “javelin men” on the occasion of the Dorchester Assizes.

The Court Leet House, wherein was transacted all the local business, and which was also used as a school, formerly stood in the “Square”; the stocks, the old village pound, and pump were near. The house now occupied by Mr. W. Gover was the residence of the Boswells, who owned land in the parish, and introduced the system of irrigating the meadows.

Athelhampton Hall is a fine old building east of Piddletown. There is a tradition that it took its name from some of the Saxon Kings, and was originally called Athelhamstan; but Hutchins thinks it more probable that it derived its name from Æthelhelm, one of the Saxon Earls in Dorset, who was killed in an engagement with the Danes A.D. 837.

The first owners of Athelhampton of whom there is any record were the de Loundres and Pideles. From them it came by marriage to the Martyns, who held it till 1595. At the death of Nicholas Martyn it was divided between his four daughters, who married respectively Henry Brune, Henry Tichborne, Thomas White, and Anthony Floyer. Gradually the shares of the Whites and Tichbornes came into the hands of the Brunes, and were sold by them in 1665 to Sir Robert Long. It then came by marriage to the Hon. William Wellesley Pole (afterwards Earl of Mornington), whose son sold it in 1848 to Mr. George James Wood, from whom it came to his nephew, Mr. G. Wood Homer. It is now the property of Mr. A. C. de Lafontaine, who purchased it in 1890. The Floyer share of the house remained in their possession till an exchange was effected by Mr. Wood, when the whole came into his hands.

The house itself consists of two sides of a quadrangle facing south and west, and was in a very bad state when bought by Mr. Wood, having, it is said, been used as a farmhouse, and the fine old oak-roofed stone-floored hall as a cattle-shed. Mr. Wood entirely renovated the oak roof, taking great trouble to preserve the original style. He re-floored the large drawing-room, and made various other extensive repairs. He removed the gatehouse, which darkened the house, and partly re-erected it in the form of a summer-house. This has, however, been again removed by the present owner, who has made many alterations. The house is built of Ham Hill stone. The east wing is said to be the oldest part of the present building, and was probably erected by Sir William Martyn, who died in 1503; while the north wing is thought to have been built by Nicholas Martyn later in the sixteenth century.

A small chapel stood on the lawn when Mr. Wood bought the property, but as this and Burlestone Church were both out of repair, he pulled them down and built the present church, to a great extent at his own cost. The chancel of old Burlestone Church is still standing in its overgrown churchyard, the tombs having all fallen into decay. No churchyard belonged to the Athelhampton Chapel, Piddletown having always been the burying-place of the owners.

In a field about a quarter of a mile from Athelhampton, on the land of Mr. G. Wood Homer, are the grass-grown mounds—the remains of the hamlet of Bardolfeston, the seat of Drogo de Bardolf, from whom it came hereditarily to the Martyns. It consisted of a manor, hamlet, and church; the latter stood at a little distance from the cottages and manor on what is now known as Church Knap or Knoll. The field in which the hamlet stood is now known as “Dunditch,” and there is a local couplet which runs:

Dunditch was a thriving town
When London was a vuzzy down.

It is probable that Bardolfeston extended irregularly to Piddletown, as it is known that cottages and a mill existed between the two, and Bardolfeston was part of the Piddle Hundred, being sometimes called Piddle Bardolf.

WOLFETON HOUSE

BY ALBERT BANKES

The present Wolfeton House, in the parish of Charminster, in the county of Dorset, is known to have been built by John, father of Sir Thomas Trenchard, during the reign of Henry VII.; but as the property was acquired by the Trenchard family (through marriage) from the Jurdains, and previously the Jurdains had obtained the house and land (also through marriage) from the Mohun family, it is quite clear that a house of some description must have existed on the same site as that of the present residence.

Some archæologists consider that the gatehouse is decidedly of the Norman period; so, should that be the case, probably the house inhabited by the Jurdains, before them by the Mohuns, was built soon after Norman Conquest.

A date is still to be seen on the north side of the north tower, but whether that refers to the actual building of the towers, or only to some portion that had been rebuilt or restored, is not known.

In a note attached to the pedigree of Trenchard it is stated that the first Sir Thomas Trenchard rebuilt the house at Wolfeton as it now stands, except some addition made by Sir George Trenchard; and there seems no reason to doubt this statement, for a study of the existing house shows very clearly two distinct dates of building. There are evidences, also, that Sir Thomas Trenchard’s rebuilding incorporated many portions of a still older edifice.

Mr. Hamilton Rogers, in his _Sepulchral Effigies of Devon_, says:

Their last heiress, Christian, daughter and heir of John de Mohun by Joan his wife, daughter of John Jurdain, of Wolveton, Charminster, married Henry Trenchard (_obit_ 1477), of Hordull, Hants, and subsequently of Wolveton.

His descendant, Sir Thomas Trenchard (_ob._ 1505), rebuilt this fine old mansion, and carved on escutcheons over the gateway; and first among the noble series of genealogical shields in the hall windows were the arms of Trenchard. Traces of the great Devonshire family of the Mohuns are not infrequently found in Dorset.

The elevation of the south front of Wolfeton House remains very much as originally erected, and is of two distinct styles of architecture—the portion of the building to the east being in the Tudor-Gothic, probably of the time of Henry VII., and the west portion in the Elizabethan, or, more probably, Jacobean style. The latter portion is a picturesque example of this pseudo-classical style of architecture and nothing more. The older part of the building, however, possesses features which are worthy of notice, as the rich labels over the windows are composed of hollow mouldings filled with rolls of sculptured fruit and foliage, and terminating in quaint corbels carved with great spirit.

Hutchins says:

The ancient seat of the Trenchards here is a noble building, and at the time when it was built perhaps the best in the country; it is a large fabric, its principal fronts to the east and south. On the north it is sheltered by a grove of trees.

One enters on the east into what formerly was a small court, and on both sides of the gate is a round tower. In this front are many windows, almost all of them different from each other, as if the architect had studied irregularity. This seems to have been the humour of that age, for Dugdale remarks that:

At Tixall, co. Stafford, the seat of the Lord Aston, there is a fine piece of masonry, built in the reign of Henry VIII.: though the windows are numerous, scarce two of them are alike, and there is the same variety of fretwork of the chimneys; so that the beauty of the structure in that age did not, as in the present, consist in uniformity, but in the greatest variety the artist could give.

On the north side of Wolfeton House there was a small cloister leading to what was the chapel, in which some of the family were married (within memory), but it has since been pulled down. To the west of the chapel there was a little court.

From Powel’s _Topographical Collections in Devon and Dorset_ (A.D. 1820) we learn that a great deal of the back of the house had been destroyed, and the whole of the fine glass (with the exception of five or six shields) was taken down, amounting to 100 lbs., and sent to Mr. Trenchard’s other house at Lytchett; but it was so badly packed that when the case was opened almost the whole of the glass was pounded or broken to pieces, so that very little was preserved.

The only remaining portion of the eastern front is the old gateway, the most distinctive feature of the house. The entrance gate is flanked by large circular towers capped by conical stone roofs. That on the south side is somewhat larger than its fellow, as well as standing a little further eastwards. The arch of the entrance gateway has continuous mouldings east and west, with a label over. The eastern label contains a shield bearing the following arms:—Quarterly, 1 and 4, Trenchard; 2, Mohun; 3, Jurdain; and an inescutcheon, Quarterly 1 and 4, 3 lozenges; 2..., 3.... The western label terminates in figures holding shields on which are two T’s combined with T. E. united by a tasselled cord. Above the apex of the arch similar initials appear interlaced, and over all T. T. combined.

Over the door within the gateway are three escutcheons on stone: (1) An angel holding a T [transcriber; fractur script], and at the points T. E. (2) The arms of Trenchard. A little to the south of the gateway is a building, on which is this inscription: “_Hoc opus constructum fuit An’ Dni._—MCCCCCXXVIII.” The tower, together with the series of rooms connecting the gatehouse westwards to the main house, are comparatively modern, as also is the entrance porch. These buildings form the present north front of the house, and over the porch are sculptured the arms of Weston.

The chapel mentioned by Hutchins as having formerly stood on the north side of the house has long since vanished, but traces of its foundations were discovered during some excavations made about fifty years ago.

Turning to the inside of the house, we find much to interest both the antiquary and the architect.

Before the hall was destroyed and replaced by the present dining-room, over the large chimney-piece there were carved representations of fourteen Kings of England, which, says Hutchins, “are said to resemble the figures in the first edition of Rastell’s _History of England_, ending with Charles I.” Aubrey, in his _Miscellanies_, states that on November 3rd, 1640 (the day on which the Long Parliament began to sit), the sceptre fell from the figure of Charles I. while the family and a large company were at dinner—an ill omen, the full import of which could not have been realised at the time. Opposite to these sculptured monarchs were the figures of an abbot, a soldier, and some esquires. On the screen were the arms and quarterings of the Trenchard family.

From the hall a large stone staircase led to the dining-room, a noble apartment, adorned, says Hutchins, “with a noble bay window, in which stood an octagon marble table on four wooden lions.”

The interior of the western portion of the house—_i.e._, of the part built by Sir George Trenchard, is composed of two storeys, of which the lower seems originally to have constituted a single apartment. Both storeys were very richly decorated; the flat ceiling of the first storey is covered with an arabesque of plaster, embracing foliage and various devices, finishing with large central pendants.

The upper floor had a lofty vaulted ceiling, corresponding with the high pitch of the roof of a similar character. Unfortunately, this ceiling has been utterly destroyed—a dreadful piece of vandalism, as the tracery of the pendants and ceiling must have equalled, or even surpassed, that of the lower rooms. This upper apartment now forms a series of bedrooms, in the centre of which is the original sculptured stone chimney-piece, having under the cornice a large panel, whereon is depicted a figure reclining on a couch surrounded by dancers.

The magnificent carved oak doorway and chimney-piece in the east drawing-room were sent to Sir Thomas Trenchard by Philip and Joanna at the same time that they presented him with their portraits and a china bowl. The following description of the chimney-pieces in the east and west drawing-rooms is given by the county historian:—

Chimney-piece No. 1, in the east drawing-room, the height of the room, consists of an arrangement of entablatures one within the other, the upper and outer cornice being supported by lofty Corinthian pillars with rich capitals; immediately beneath this are two large sunken panels, respectively containing figures of Hope and Justice, separated by male caryatides, which by their different costumes are intended perhaps to typify a citizen, knight, and esquire.

Within the innermost cornice, and immediately surrounding the fireplace, is a series of panels of great interest, displaying rural and hunting scenes, trades, satyrs, heads, etc., quaintly but faithfully carved.

Chimney-piece No. 2, in the west drawing-room, is similar in its general character; the principal subject amongst its decorations represents the contest of the goddesses in the garden of the Hesperides.

One of the most beautiful examples of carving is an inner door-case in the east drawing-room, the arch over which has a richly moulded soffit, and carved heads in the spandrils; over the door, rich Corinthian pillars, flanked by sculptured figures of a king in armour and a queen, support a cornice surmounting a large sunken panel.

In the front of the cornice is a shield bearing the following arms: _Quarterly_—1 and 4, _Trenchard_; 2, _Mohun_; 3, Semée of cross-crosslets, a lion rampant, _Jurdain_.

There is, of course, much else to interest the antiquary in the way of old furniture and objects of art, and any visitor will be “charmed with the admirable manner in which the art of the modern furniture has been adapted to the character of the old house, lending its aid to heighten rather than to detract from the beauty of the antique carvings and of the interior.”

A curious legend in connection with the dining-room is that of the ghost of Lady Trenchard having made its appearance immediately _before_ her death. Anyone, of course, can believe as much or as little as he likes about the ghost part of the story, but of the fact of the lady’s suicide there is no doubt. During the ownership of Sir Thomas Trenchard one of the Judges of Assize came to Wolfeton House to dine; but no sooner had the company sat down than his lordship, greatly to the surprise of everyone, ordered his carriage and abruptly left the house. On their way back to Dorchester he told his marshal that he had seen standing behind Lady Trenchard’s chair a figure of her ladyship with her throat cut and her head under her arm. Before the carriage reached the town a messenger overtook it on horseback with the news that Lady Trenchard had just committed suicide.

As to the dining-room as it now stands, it may be mentioned that Wolfeton, like many other old houses of the same period, suffered greatly at the hands of those who in the last century were wont to pull down one-half of their houses to repair the other half. This appears to have happened to Wolfeton House, as, judging from an old engraving of the house, the dining-hall must have been quite twice, or more than twice, the size of the present room.

Of the historical anecdotes connected with Wolfeton House, the visit of the King and Queen of Castile is, perhaps, of the greatest interest.

In the early part of the sixteenth century, Philip, Archduke of Austria and King of Castile, set forth with a great armada, with the intention of surprising the King of Aragon, but he had scarcely left the coast of Flanders when, encountering a violent storm, he was compelled to put into Weymouth in distress. King Philip and his Queen were invited to Wolfeton House by Sir Thomas Trenchard, then High Sheriff, and were hospitably entertained. And with this visit the origin of the Duke of Bedford’s family is curiously mixed up; for on the arrival of the King and Queen, Sir Thomas Trenchard, being unacquainted with the Spanish language, found a difficulty in conversing with his guests. In his dilemma he had recourse to his cousin, John Russell, of Kingston Russell, who, being a good linguist, became a favourite with the King, and was recommended by him to Henry VII., who appointed him to an office in the royal household. In the succeeding reign Russell was also popular, and the confiscation of Church property during this period rendered it possible for Henry VIII. to bestow upon him extensive lands. And thus was founded the great Bedford family.

In acknowledgment of his hospitality Sir Thomas Trenchard was presented by the King and Queen of Castile with some very valuable china vases, together with their portraits, all of which are now at Bloxworth House, near Wareham. They also presented to him the carved chimney-piece and doorway still standing in the drawing-room at Wolfeton House, as before described.

Engraved copies of the oil-paintings of the King and Queen of Castile hang on the left-hand side of the staircase, alongside of which is a Spanish engraving of the poor Queen Joan, when sorrow at the death of her husband had sent her mad. On their way to the Royal Mausoleum the funeral _cortège_ had to pass a night at a nunnery. In the middle of the night the poor mad Queen suddenly asked where they were. “In a nunnery,” was the reply. “I will not have my husband surrounded by all these women,” exclaimed the Queen; so the _cortège_ immediately removed, and spent the remainder of the night, until daylight, in the open country.

In the ancient gatehouse of Wolfeton the winding staircase of forty-one oaken steps appears to be quite unique: there are nine stone steps at the base, twenty-four of oak to the first floor level, and seventeen leading to the garret above. For years (some think one hundred) this staircase must have been a complete ruin, as is easily seen by the decayed state of those steps opposite to the two windows, the wind and the rain having beaten in on them for many years.

In addition to the King and Queen of Castile, other royal visitors have from time to time honoured Wolfeton House with their presence, and during the residence of George III. at Weymouth the King and Queen paid it frequent visits. On one occasion, when George III. admired a marble table that used to stand in the drawing-room, the Trenchard of that day immediately presented it to His Majesty, and the table is now in the royal dairy at Frogmore, Windsor.

No account of Wolfeton House would be complete without some allusion to the story of the Roman Catholic priest. In the time of Queen Elizabeth, when it was the object of the then Government to stamp out in every way the Papal influence in England, the Weld family had a Roman Catholic priest concealed at their house at Chideock, in Dorset. Sir Thomas Trenchard, who then resided at Wolfeton House, and was a personal friend of Mr. Weld, of Chideock, happened to be High Sheriff of the county of Dorset for that year, and received orders to go over and search for the priest therein concealed. On account of his friendship with Mr. Weld, Sir Thomas, on reaching Chideock, made a most cursory search, and left with the intention of reporting to the authorities that he could find no signs of the priest; but, unfortunately, as he was leaving, the villagers, whose sympathies were Roman, not aware of his benign intentions, began hooting and calling the High Sheriff and his constables a pack of blind owls for not being able to find the concealed priest. “If that’s what you want,” exclaimed Sir Thomas, losing his temper, “I’ll soon show you I am not so blind as you think!” and, surrounding the mansion with his constables, a real search was made, and the poor priest was soon discovered and brought over to Wolfeton House as a prisoner. The priest, a highly-educated French gentleman, made himself so agreeable that Sir Thomas Trenchard did all in his power, by writing to the authorities, to save his life; but the Government of that day was so desirous of making an example, that all entreaties were in vain—the poor priest was executed, and, it is said, was also drawn and quartered in the High Street of Dorchester.

THE LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF DORSET

BY MISS M. JOURDAIN

“Dorset has continued Dorset alone from time immemorial,” and its special character has been more carefully preserved and fixed than that of any other English county in the work of two Dorset poets, William Barnes and Thomas Hardy, one of whom has succeeded, like Mistral in France, in making its native language a literary medium known beyond its spoken limits.

Dorset’s earlier poets,[61] however, have not been “local”; and it is characteristic of Matthew Prior that, in the account drawn up by himself for Jacobs’ _Lives of the Poets_, he describes his father as a “citizen of London,” and that though the first entry against his name on his admission as pensioner at St. John’s College, Cambridge, is _Dorcestr_, it has been altered by a later hand into _Middlesexiensis_. In spite of conflicting entries, it is now generally admitted that Prior, _perennis et fragrans_—the motto upon the modern brass to his memory in Wimborne Minster[62]—was born at or near Wimborne, in East Dorset, the son of George Prior, who is said to have been a joiner.

“With regard to the family of Prior, the tradition of Wimborne says that his father was a carpenter, and one house he lived in is pointed out: it is close to the present Post Office, and is called the house in which the poet was born. The other was pulled down, but its site is known.”[63]

Local tradition makes Prior a pupil at the free Grammar School; and of the unusually large library of chained books in the old church, one was said to be a standing testimony to his carelessness—a chained folio copy of Ralegh’s _History of the World_, in which a hole is said to have been burned by the boy when dozing over the book by the light of a smuggled taper. Unfortunately for the floating tradition, it has been stated that this particular defacement is the work, not of a candle, but of a red-hot poker. Still more unfortunately, it has been proved that the _History_, with other books, was placed in the library[64] at a much later date than Prior’s boyhood.[65]

Almost a century later a poetic “Court” was held at Eastbury, in North Dorset, by George Bubb Dodington, Lord Melcombe, who is not interesting as a poet[66] himself, but as the cause of poetry in others, the last of the patrons, a curious, gorgeous, tawdry figure, fit to be seen through the coloured glass of Macaulay’s ridicule. He was the easy mark for dedications and compliments from many of the best-known writers of the day—poets utterly discrowned, and those on whose brows the laurel grows very thin and brittle; Edward Young, Thomson, and Fielding mention him; while his Great House at Eastbury is celebrated by Thomson, Young, and Christopher Pitt,[67] who writes, somewhat oddly, of this “new Eden in the Wild.” The pleasures of this “Eden” appear, from an epistle of Pitt, to have been smoking and drinking, with conversational intervals. Dr. Young (of the _Night Thoughts_) sits with “his Dodington,”

Charm’d with his flowing Burgundy and wit,
By turns relieving with the circling draught
Each pause of chat and interval of thought;
Or, through the well-glazed tube, from business freed,
Draw the rich spirit of the Indian weed.

Thomson’s “Eastbury”—

Seat serene and plain
Where simple Nature reigns,

is as bad, in its way, as Pitt’s “Eden”—serenity, plainness, and simple nature being the most unlikely characteristics of Dodington,[68] whose heavy figure was arrayed in gorgeous brocades; and whose equally magnificent State bed was “garded and re-garded” with gold and silver embroideries showing by the remains of pocket-holes, button-holes and loops that they came from old coats and breeches. This great house, after Dodington’s death, was taken down all but one wing and sold piecemeal by Earl Temple, his heir.

Henry Fielding, one of the Eastbury circle—he dedicated to Dodington an epistle on “True Greatness”—was brought up as a boy in the manor-house at East Stower,[69] where he was taught by the Reverend Mr. Oliver, curate of the neighbouring village of Motcombe, said to have been the original of Trulliber, a portrait drawn “in resentment of some punishment inflicted on him,” according to Hutchins.[70] Fielding was fortunate in another portrait, for it is generally admitted that the prototype of Parson Abraham Adams was William Young, Incumbent of West Stower, who had many of Adams’ eccentricities. As an instance of Young’s absence of mind, it is said that when chaplain to a regiment in Flanders he “wandered in a reverie into the enemy’s camp, and was only aroused from his error by his arrest. The commanding officer, perceiving the good man’s simplicity, allowed him to return to his friends.”

At East Stower, too, Fielding lived for a time with his first wife.

William Crowe, though like Fielding only a short time resident in Dorset, is admitted on the strength of his topographical poem, _Lewesdon Hill_, of which Rogers thought so much that when travelling in Italy he made two authors his constant study for versification, Milton and Crowe.[71] Crowe’s _Lewesdon Hill_ is a perfect example of an eighteenth century didactic and descriptive poem, with all the heaviness due to the requirements of an age which, like Horace Walpole, called for “edification” in its art. As in Goldsmith’s _Traveller_ the person who speaks the verses sits pensively on an Alpine height, so Crowe in his poem is supposed to be walking on the top of the hill on a May morning—a hill, it has been suggested, that Fuller[72] may have climbed before him, and where the wide prospect, “standing where Moses stood when the Lord showed him all the land,” may have prompted the title of his book, _A Pisgah Sight of Palestine_, which he wrote when at Broadwindsor. Upon this hill, where

The lonely thorn
Bends from the rude south-east with top cut sheer,

Crowe surveys the outspread map of the county—Shipton Hill, Burton Cliff, Eggardon Hill, the rich Marshwood Vale—in winter

Cold, vapourish, miry, wet,

to the “rampire” of Pillesdon, even the “nameless rivulet” (the minutest trickle of a stream at the foot of Lewesdon Hill), which, he rejoices,

Yet flows along
Untainted with the commerce of the world.

William Lisle Bowles, author of faint and forgotten verses, is remembered by Coleridge’s early admiration for his sonnets. His father, the Rev. W. Bowles (rector of Uphill), planted and improved Barton Hill House, in Dorset, which the poet sold. On leaving it the poet wrote verses full of regret for

These woods, that whispering wave
My father rear’d and _nurst_.

An author unknown outside his county is John Fitzgerald Pennie (buried July 17th, 1848). He was born at East Lulworth, March 25th, 1782, and is known as a dramatic writer. He published _Scenes in Palestine, or Dramatic Sketches from the Bible_, 1825; _Ethelwolf_, a tragedy, 1821, etc. He followed in his early years the profession of an actor, but after a chequered and unsuccessful career, settled in his native village and devoted himself to literary pursuits. He published his autobiography in 1827, _The Tale of a Modern Genius, or the Miseries of Parnassus_. In 1810 he married Cordelia Elizabeth, daughter of Jerome Whitfield, a London attorney. He and his wife died within a few days of each other, and were buried in the same grave.

Wordsworth’s connection with Dorset is of short duration, but is of interest as occurring at a critical period in his career. On his receiving Raisley Calvert’s legacy, he was able to live with his sister Dorothy at a farmhouse at Racedown,[73] which he was allowed to occupy rent free on condition that the owner might spend a few weeks there from time to time. It was in the autumn of 1795 that he settled there. His house is set upon the north-west slope of the “rampire” Pillesdon, in a hollow among hills cultivated to their summits, or patched with gorse and broom, which open here and there to allow glimpses of the sea. The Dorset peasants in Wordsworth’s time were wretchedly poor, their shapeless cottages “not at all beyond what might be expected in savage life,” as Dorothy Wordsworth wrote. Very little trace of the peculiar quality of the place is to be found in Wordsworth’s poems, but it was here he wrote the first of his poems of country life, modelled with an experience so personal as to keep every sentence vividly accurate.

It was here that he watched[74] the “unquiet widowhood” of Margaret, drawing out the hemp which she had wound round her waist like a belt, and spinning, as she walked backwards before her cottage door. Here, no doubt, he saw her ruined cottage—there are many crumbling shells and ruined cottages in the district to-day—with the red stains and tufts of wool in the corner-stone of the porch where the sheep were permitted to come and “couch unheeded.” The garden, run wild, too, is to be met with to-day:

Its matted weeds
Marked with the steps of those, whom, as they passed,
The gooseberry trees that shot in long, lank slips,
Or currants, hanging from their leafless stems
In scanty strings, had tempted to o’erleap
The broken wall. I looked around, and there,
Where two tall hedge-rows of thick alder-boughs
Joined in a cold damp nook, espied a well,
Shrouded with willow-flowers and plumy fern.

Here, too, was Goody Blake’s cabin:—

On a hill’s northern side...
Where from sea-blasts the hawthorns lean
And hoary dews are slow to melt.

“The muffled clamour of the outside world only reached the secluded farmhouse at Racedown after long delay”—in other words, letters were delivered there but once a week; and on one occasion at least Wordsworth asks to have a book franked, otherwise he will “not be able to release it from the post-office.” A part of this time was given to gardening, and, no doubt from motives of economy, almost all the meals consisted of vegetables. “I have been lately living,” he writes, “upon air and the essence of carrots, cabbages, turnips, and other esculent vegetables, not excluding parsley.”[75] At another time he sets forth to warm himself, like Goody Blake, by gathering sticks strewn upon the road by the gale; and his habit was to take a two hours’ stroll every morning, and now and then a long expedition on foot. He and his sister, as the Cumberland peasants said, were “a deal upo’ the road,” and many times they must have walked more than forty miles in the day. There is a story still current in the neighbourhood that Wordsworth once borrowed a horse to ride into Lyme Regis, and returned on foot, having _forgotten_ the horse! With all its hardships and frugalities, Dorothy Wordsworth loved Racedown. It was “the place dearest to (her) recollections upon the whole surface of the island,” and she speaks warmly of the scenery on Pillesdon, Lewesdon, and the view of the sea from Lambert’s Castle—which is said by some to be _the_ view of the county.

Landor’s thought, that “when a language grows up all into stalk, and its flowers begin to lose somewhat of their character, we must go forth into the open fields, through the dingles, or among the mountains, for fresh seed,” would have been endorsed by both Wordsworth and Barnes alike, but with very different ideas as to what was considered fresh seed. Barnes’ innovation was an innovation of the letter rather than the spirit, the literary use of the local dialect which he heard in his boyhood, and which, he said, was spoken in the greatest purity in villages and hamlets of the secluded Vale of Blackmore, a valley so secluded that its life was practically the life of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries until the nineteenth was far advanced. He attributes his poems’ freedom from “slang and vice” to this seclusion; but it is as much due to his personal[76] preference of light to darkness. His rustics are, as a rule, happy people.

At Rushay, William Barnes spent his early days, and he was educated at the day school at Sturminster Newton. Somewhere along the road from Bagber to Sturminster was a haunted house, about the exact locality of which he gave no information beyond that a “dark, gloomy lane led to it.” He once pointed out the lane to grand-children as the place their “great-grandfather was riding down, when all at once he saw the ghost in the form of a fleece of wool, which rolled along mysteriously by itself till it got under the legs of his horse, and the horse went lame from that hour, and for ever after.” Barnes was of pure Dorset[77] stock. His long life was lived almost entirely in Dorset; and when at Mere, in Wiltshire, a stone’s throw from his own county, he “always yearned for Dorset and Dorchester.” Latterly he lived near Dorchester, where, until 1882, “few figures were more familiar to the eye in the county town of Dorset on a market day than an aged clergyman, quaintly attired in caped cloak, knee-breeches and buckled shoes, with a leather satchel slung over his shoulders and a stout staff in his hand. He seemed usually to prefer the middle of the street to the pavement, and to be thinking of matters which had nothing to do with the scene before him. He plodded along with a broad, firm tread, notwithstanding the slight stoop occasioned by years. Every Saturday morning he might have been seen thus trudging up the narrow South Street, his shoes coated with mud according to the state of the roads between his rural home and Dorchester, and a little grey dog at his heels, till he reached the four crossways in the centre of the town. Halting there, opposite the public clock, he would pull his old-fashioned watch from its deep fob and set it with great precision to London time.”

An unusual union of scholar and poet, his little Dutch pictures are free from the dull undertone of the conventional manner that Burns occasionally fell into. Indeed, he has more affinity with the Provençal poet and lexicographer, Mistral, than with Burns or Béranger, with whom he is usually compared. He is perhaps mistaken in his belief that the Dorset dialect is “altogether as fit a vehicle of rustic feeling and thought as the Doric as found in the Idyllics of Theocritus.” But, after making this exception about the “fitness” of his Doric, there remains in his clear, untroubled poems of still life, in his unaffected eclogues, no small affinity with Theocritus. There is a charm in his limitations; he belongs not to England, but to Dorset; not to Dorset, but to the Vale of Blackmore, where the slow, green river, his “cloty” Stour, with its deep pools whence leaps the may-fly undisturbed by anglers, is the stream dearest to his memory.

Barnes was Mr. Hardy’s near neighbour and personal friend—Mr. Hardy’s house is less than a mile from the Rectory of Winterborne Came—and both have been interpreters of the life—especially of the vanished life—and character of their pastoral county. In every other respect they are as different as is “Egdon” Heath from Blackmore Vale.

It is difficult to say in what form of topography Mr. Hardy is at his best within his “kingdom”—his patient and precise creation of a town such as “Casterbridge” (Dorchester), the architectural individuality of his great houses, or his knowledge of “those sequestered spots outside the gates of the world,” and of woodlands and wildernesses. He has the knowledge with which he credits Angel Clare of “the seasons in their moods, morning and evening, night and noon, in their temperaments; winds in their several dispositions; trees, waters, and clouds, shades and silence, _ignes fatui_; constellations and the voices of inanimate things.” In most cases, the birthplace of a novelist has no particular significance in relation to his work. Very often a writer’s county is like Matthew Prior’s, exchanged for Middlesex. But in the case of Mr. Hardy it is different. The fact that he was born in a “mere germ of a village” near Dorchester, and within sound of a heath; that his life has been spent, for the most part, in Dorset; that he now lives on the outskirts of Dorchester, and that he comes of a Dorset stock—tracing his descent, however, from John le Hardy (son of Clement, Governor of Jersey in 1488), who settled in the West of England before the end of the fourteenth century—are significant points in his biography.[78] By the circumstances of birth and lifelong residence the background of his novels, _Wessex_, has become mainly limited to Dorset (South Wessex), and especially to the neighbourhood of Dorchester.

The interest of Mr. Hardy’s backgrounds is twofold. There is their purely artistic interest as intensifying action and character; there is also their topographical interest. Mr. Hardy’s imaginary kingdom was so unlike the photographer’s “studio backgrounds” of other novelists that long before sketch-maps of Wessex were prepared and published in the uniform edition of his works the identity of many of his scenes afforded no manner of doubt to Dorset readers. The precision with which he describes a building or a neighbourhood, notes position, distance, proportion, has been a clue and a perpetual interest to those who follow the intricacies of Wessex geography, in spite of Mr. Hardy’s half-discouragement of those who sought to localise the horizons and landscapes of his “merely realistic dream country.”

His “illuminative surnames” have been spoken of by some writers. His place-names are no less illuminative, and his quaint or sonorous substitutes might be transferred to the map of Dorset with little loss. In some cases an older name is revived, such as Shaston, Middleton Abbey, and Kingsbere. Sometimes he has made a slight modification of the real name, or received a suggestion from it, as in Sherton Abbas, Emminster, Port Bredy, Chaseborough, Casterbridge. Other names are downright inventions, often a _précis_ of the natural features of the town, such as Aldbrickham for Reading; or made with a fine ear for local probability.[79]

The county town of Dorset, with its core of old houses, and too many that are new, is the centre of the Hardy district, as it is the “pole, focus, or nerve-knot,” of the surrounding country. Its memories of Rome are preserved in Mr. Hardy’s name for it, “Casterbridge”; and its outward appearance in the days when Dorchester had no suburbs, and was “compact as a box of dominoes” behind its stockade of limes and chestnuts. A description of the old-fashioned place, in the mouth of one of Mr. Hardy’s characters, always quoted in the guide-books to Dorchester, is that “it is huddled all together, and it is shut in by a square wall of trees like a plot of garden-ground by a box edging”; and the unusual way the country came up to the town and met in one line is best described in his words:—

The farmer’s boy could sit under his barley mow and pitch a stone into the office window of the town clerk; reapers at work among the sheaves nodded to acquaintances standing on the pavement corner; the red-robed judge, when he condemned a sheep-stealer, pronounced sentence to the tune of Baa, that floated in at the window from the remainder of the flock browsing hard by; 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.

It has been said that the Dorchester in the Wessex novels had no suburbs; the North Street ended abruptly in a mill by the river; the South Street came to an end in a cornfield—but these bounds have been leaped over in several places, and to-day the east, or Fordington side of the town (Mr. Hardy’s Durnover) alone remains unchanged; and here the flat water-meadows stretch up to the garden-hedges and the actual walls of the houses. In spite of changes without the escarpments, the curfew still sounds at the stroke of eight from St. Peter’s with its “peremptory clang,” the signal for shop-shutting throughout the town. The brick bridge over the Frome, and the stone bridge over a branch of the same stream in the meads, have their well-defined peculiarities in Dorchester as in “Casterbridge.” The neighbourhood of “Mixen” Lane (Mill Lane), the “mildewed leaf” in the sturdy and flourishing Casterbridge plant, is recognisable at the east end of the town, near the town bridges.

Lucetta’s house, “High Place Hall,” at the corner of Durngate Street, has a modern shop-front inserted; while the most significant feature of her house is to be found at Colyton House, where, in the centre of the wall flanking the garden, is an archway, now bricked up, surmounted by a battered mask in which the open-mouthed, comic leer can hardly be discerned to-day. Without the town, on the Weymouth Road, is the immense Roman “Ring”—“Maumbury Ring, melancholy, lonely, yet accessible from every part of the town”—which was to Dorchester what the ruined Colosseum is to modern Rome.