A touching epitaph desires your prayers for two of the family:
Here lyeth the body of Xpofer Martyn Esquyer,
Sone and heyre unto Syr Willym Martyn, knyght,
Pray for there Soules with harty desyre
That bothe may be sure of Eternall lyght;
Calling to Remembraunce that ev’ry wyhgt
Most nedys dye, and therefor lett us pray
As other for us may do Another day.
This church of Piddletown, or “Weatherbury,” is the scene of Sergeant Troy’s belated remorse and of the acute misery of that incident where, coming by the light of a lantern and planting flowers on Fanny Robin’s grave, he sleeps in the porch while the rain-storm breaks and the storm-water from the gurgoyles of the tower spouts furiously over the spot.
“The persistent torrent from the gurgoyle’s jaws directed all its vengeance into the grave. The rich tawny mould was stirred into motion, and boiled like chocolate. The water accumulated and washed deeper down, and the roar of the pool thus formed spread into the night. . . . The flowers so carefully planted by Fanny’s repentant lover began to move and writhe in their bed. The winter-violets turned slowly upside down, and became a mere mat of mud. Soon the snowdrops and other bulbs danced in the boiling mass like ingredients in a cauldron. Plants of the tufted species were loosened, rose to the surface, and floated off.”
The street beside the church retains a good deal of its quaint features of thatch and plaster, with deep eaves where the house-martins build. A pretty corner including an old thatched house with architectonic windows closely resembling those of a Queen Anne bureau, and supported on pillars having a cousinship with classic art, is especially noticeable.
If we wish to see the old mansion that served as model for Bathsheba’s farm, we shall not find it in Piddletown, but must turn aside and proceed up the valley of the Piddle, in the direction of Piddlehinton and Piddletrenthide—usually termed “Longpiddle.” Before reaching these, at the distance of rather over a mile, we come to Lower Walterstone, where, behind noble groups of beeches, horse-chestnuts, and sycamores growing on raised grassy banks, it will be found, in the shape of a Jacobean mansion eloquently portrayed by the novelist:
“By daylight, the bower of Oak’s new-found mistress, Bathsheba Everdene, presented itself as 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 houseleek or sengreen sprouted from the eaves of the low surrounding buildings. A gravel walk leading from the door to the road in front was incrusted 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.”
The way from Piddletown to Dorchester, passing the hamlet singularly and interestingly named “Troy Town,” which, although itself intrinsically without visible interest, invites speculation, presently passes over Yellowham Hill, clothed in luxuriant woods. This spot, the “Yalbury Hill” of Troy’s excruciatingly pitiful meeting with Fanny Robin, figures, together with the woodlands—the “Yalbury Great Wood” of Under the Greenwood Tree—in several others among the Wessex stories. Coming to it in old times, the coaches changed horses at the “Buck’s Head” inn, now quite disestablished and forgot, save for the humorous description of it to be found in the pages of Far from the Madding Crowd. Unswervingly the highway passes over its crest and down on the other side, the wayfarer along it watched by bright-eyed squirrels and the other lesser fauna of this dense covert, while he thinks himself unobserved. It is a lovely road, but you should see it and its encompassing woods in autumn, when the October sunshine, with that characteristic golden sheen peculiar to the time of year, falls between the rich red trunks of the firs on to the golden-brown of the dried bracken; when the acorns are ripe on the dwarf oaks and fall with startling little crashes into the sere leaves of the undergrowth; when the nuts are ripe on the hazels and the squirrels—too busy now to follow the wayfarer’s movements—are industriously all day long gathering store of them over against winter. Then Yellowham Woods are at their finest.
