It is thirty-eight and a half miles from Salisbury to Dorchester, the “Casterbridge” of the novels, along the old coach-road to Exeter. Speaking as an exploratory cyclist, I would ten times rather go the reverse way, from west to east, for the gradients are all against the westward traveller, and westerly winds are the prevailing airs during summer and autumn. It is, indeed, a terribly difficult road, exposed, and very trying in its long rises. One charming interlude there is, three miles from Salisbury, at the beautifully situated little village of Coombe Bissett, set down in the deep valley of an affluent of the Wiltshire Avon; but it is heartbreaking work climbing out of it again, up the inclines of Crowden Down. At eight miles’ distance from Salisbury the old Woodyates Inn, long since re-christened the “Shaftesbury Arms,” stands in a lonely situation beside the road, looking regretful for bygone coaching days. Its old name, deriving from “wood-gates,” indicated its position on the south-western marches of the wooded district of Cranborne Chase. When railways disestablished coaches and the road resumed its solitude, the old inn became for a time the home of William Day’s training establishment for racehorses. He tells, in his recollections, of the drinking habits of the old Wiltshire farmers in general, and of two in particular, who used to call at Woodyates when on their way to or from Salisbury. They would talk, over the fire and their glasses of grog, somewhat in this fashion of their drunken exploits when riding home horseback: “Well, John, I fell off ten times.” “Yes, Thomas, and I fell off a dozen times: you see, I rode the old black horse, and he always jerks me about so.” It was said that there was scarcely a yard of ground over the eight miles that these worthies had not fallen on to from their horses.
At the distance of a mile from the coach-road at this point, where, by the way, we leave Wilts and enter Dorset, is the Hardy landmark of “Trantridge,” to be identified with the little village of Pentridge set down on the map. It was to Trantridge that Tess came early in her career, from her home at Marnhull in the Vale of Blackmore, to take service with Mrs. Stoke-D’Urberville of The Slopes, relict of Mr. Simon Stoke, merchant or money-lender, who had unwarrantably assumed the name, the crest, and arms of the knightly D’Urbervilles—dead and gone and powerless to resent the affront. It would be useless to seek The Slopes, rising in all the glory of its new crimson brick “like a geranium bloom against the subdued colours around”; but plain to see, not far away, is the “soft azure landscape of the Chase—a truly venerable tract of forest land, one of the few remaining woodlands in England, of undoubted primæval date.” It was in the Chase that the ruin of Tess was wrought by Alec D’Urberville.
The exceedingly rustic village of Pentridge nestles under the lee of a long, partly wooded hill, probably the “ridge” referred to in the place-name. In the little highly restored or rebuilt church with the stone spirelet is now to be seen, since August, 1902, when it was erected, the plain white marble tablet:
To the Memory of
ROBERT BROWNING,of Woodyates, in this parish, who died Nov. 25th, 1746,
and is the first known forefather of
Robert Browning, the poet.He was formerly footman and butler in the
Bankes family.“All service ranks the same with God.”
Browning.
This Tablet
was erected by some of the poet’s friends and admirers
1902.
Much reflected glory doubtless accrues to “the Bankes family” from this tablet, which owes its being to the exertions of Dr. F. J. Furnivall. It seems that the poet’s ancestor, after severing his connection with the Bankes, became landlord of the Woodyates Inn, and churchwarden here.
This entrance to Dorsetshire is not so favourable an one as that, for example, from Somerset, by Templecombe and Stalbridge or Sherborne, where Dorset is indeed like unto the Land of Promise, a land flowing with milk and honey, where herds of cattle low musically in mead or byre, and the earth is alluvial—rich, deep, and sticky.
Here is the more arid, elevated country of open down; chalky, and producing only coarse grass, pine-trees, bracken, and furze—a sheep-grazing, as opposed to a cattle-rearing, district. Dorset is indeed a greatly varied county in the character of its soils. The sheep-grazing districts may be said to be this of the north-east border, and those other stretches of lofty, almost waterless chalk downs, running due east and west, parallel with the coast, with a similarly lengthy, but broader, stretch in a like direction, from where the downs rise from the Stour at Sturminster Marshall, past Milton Abbas and Cerne Abbas, on to Beaminster. In between these are the valleys of the River Frome—the “Vale of Great Dairies” of Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and the “Vale of Little Dairies” in the same story, otherwise Blackmore Vale. A glance at the map will show the River Frome flowing in its “green trough of sappiness and humidity” from the neighbourhood of Beaminster, past Chilfroom, Frome Vanchurch, and Frampton, which most obviously take their name from the stream, to Dorchester, Moreton, Wool, and Wareham, whence it pours its enriching waters into Poole Harbour; and another glance will discover the Vale of Little Dairies, or Blackmore, bounded by Blandford and Minterne Magna, and the heights of High Stoy on the south, and by Shaftesbury, Wincanton, and Sherborne on the north; including within its compass Stalbridge and Sturminster Newton, together with a host of small villages. The natural outlet of this last district—which, despite the name of “Little Dairies,” given to it in the pages of the novels, is a larger area than that of the Frome valley, and of course produces in the aggregation more—is the railway junction of Templecombe, which, beyond being a mere junction, is also an exceedingly busy and bustling place for the receipt of all this dairy produce of Blackmore.
Such are, roughly, the main agricultural divisions of Dorset, which is, to the hard-working farmer who is his own bailiff, with his family to aid in the dairy-work, still a county where ends may be made to meet, with a considerable selvedge or overlapping to sweeten his industry. Despite a very general belief current in towns, there are still considerable numbers of these families. The farmer and his wife have largely grown out of the rustic speech, and their sons and daughters—the daughters especially, the adaptive dears!—have got culture for leisure moments, but they are none the less practical for that. A generation ago, perhaps, things were not so pleasing, for the then would-be up-to-date attempted the absurdity of aping the leisured classes, while seeking to carry on farming and obtain a living by it. Such as those came to grief, and were rightly the butts of outside observers, as well as of moralists of their own class. A thorough-going farmer of that period, who saw the daughters of his neighbour going on the way to their music-lesson, reported his feelings and sayings as follows:
“While I and an’ my wife were out a-milken, they maidens went by, an’ I zaid to her, ‘Where be they maidens a-gwoin’?’ an’ she zaid, ‘Oh! they be a-gwoin’ to their music.’ An’ I zaid, ‘Oh! a-gwoin’ to their music at milken-time! That ’ull come to zom’ehat, that wull.’” And it doubtless did come to a pretty considerable deal, if—as a doctor might say—the course of the disease was normal.