LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Weymouth: St. Mary Street and Statue of George III. Frontispiece
Fawley Magna [3]
High Street, Oxford, Facing [4]
High Street, Winchester [11]
Winchester Cathedral, Facing [14]
Weyhill Fair [24]
Salisbury Cathedral [30]
Stonehenge [32]
Pentridge [36]
Eastbury [41]
Blandford Forum [45]
The Old Manor-House, Milborne St. Andrew [49]
Weatherbury Castle [50]
The Obelisk, Weatherbury Castle [51]
Piddletown [55]
A Quaint Corner in Piddletown [57]
Lower Walterstone Farm; Original of “Bathsheba’s Farm” in Far from the Madding Crowd [59]
Ten Hatches, Dorchester [69]
Dorchester Gaol [75]
The Hangman’s Cottage, Dorchester [77]
Colyton House, Dorchester [79]
The Old Church, Swanage [89]
Encombe [95]
Corfe Castle [99]
Corfe Castle, Facing [106]
Approach to Wareham: The Walls of Wareham [116]
Wareham [119]
The Abbot’s Coffin, Bindon Abbey [123]
Woolbridge House [125]
Woolbridge House: Entrance Front [127]
Gallows Hill, Egdon Heath, Facing [128]
Chamberlain’s Bridge [130]
Rye Hill, Bere Regis [131]
Bere Regis [135]
Bere Regis [137]
Bere Regis: Interior of Church [141]
“Toothache,” Bere Regis [143]
“Headache,” Bere Regis [143]
Bere Regis: The Turberville Window [145]
Stinsford Church; the “Mellstock” of Under the Greenwood Tree [149]
Birthplace of Thomas Hardy [158]
Birthplace of Thomas Hardy [159]
The Duck Inn, Original of the “Quiet Woman” Inn in The Return of the Native [161]
Tincleton [163]
An Egdon Farmstead [165]
A Farm on Egdon [166]
Cross-in-Hand, Facing [170]
Batcombe [171]
Tomb of “Conjuring Minterne” [173]
Melbury House, Facing [174]
Sherborne Abbey Church, Facing [184]
Long Burton [192]
Holnest: the Drax Mausoleum [194]
Dungeon Hill and the Vale of Blackmore [195]
Cerne Abbas [201]
The Gatehouse, Cerne Abbey, Facing [202]
The Cerne Giant [203]
Cerne Abbas [206]
Wolveton House [207]
Weymouth and Portland from the Ridgeway [209]
The Wishing Well, Upwey [211]
Weymouth Harbour [219]
Sandsfoot Castle [223]
Bow and Arrow Castle [229]
Portisham [233]
The Road out of Abbotsbury [235]
Sheep-Shearing in Wessex, Facing [236]
West Bay, Bridport [239]
High Street and Town Hall, Bridport [243]
Sutton Poyntz: the “Overcombe” of The Trumpet Major [247]
Bincombe [249]
Poxwell Manor [251]
Owermoigne: the Smugglers’ Haunt in The Distracted Preacher [253]
Lulworth Cove [254]
Lulworth Cove [255]
Lytchett Heath: The Equestrian Effigy of George III.: Entrance to Charborough Park, Facing [256]
Bournemouth: The Invalids’ Walk [258]
Poole Quay [267]
Sturminster Marshall: Anthony Etricke’s Tomb, Wimborne Minster, Facing [270]
The Wimborne Clock Jack [273]
Wimborne Minster: the Minster and the Grammar School, Facing [274]
The Tower, Charborough Park [281]
Weather-vane at Shapwick: the “Shapwick Monster” [283]
The Maypole, Shillingstone [285]
Sturminster Newton: The White Hart Inn [286]
Marnhull [289]
Gold Hill, Shaftesbury [295]
The Observatory, Horton, Facing [298]
Horton Inn: the “Lorton Inn” of Barbara of the House of Grebe [299]
Monmouth Ash [300]
Bingham’s Melcombe [303]
Milton Abbas, Facing [306]
Milton Abbas, an Early “Model” Village [307]
Abbot Milton’s Rebus, Milton Abbey [309]
Milton Abbey [310]
Turnworth House [311]

CHAPTER I

PRELIMINARIES: THE HARDY COUNTRY DEFINED; FAWLEY MAGNA; OXFORD

In the literary partition of England, wherein the pilgrim may discover tracts definitely and indissolubly dedicated to Dickens, to Tennyson, to Ingoldsby, and many another, no province has been so thoroughly annexed or so effectively occupied as that associated with the Wessex novels written by Mr. Thomas Hardy. He holds Wessex in fee-simple, to the exclusion of all others; and so richly topographical are all those romances, that long ere sketch-maps showing his literary occupancy of it were prepared and published in the uniform edition of his works, there were those to whom the identity of most of his scenes offered no manner of doubt. By the circumstances of birth and of lifelong residence, the “Wessex” of the novels has come to denote chiefly his native county of Dorset, and in especial the neighbourhood of Dorchester, the county town; but Mr. Hardy was early an expansionist, and his outposts were long ago thrown forward, to at last make his Wessex in the domain of letters almost coterminous with that ancient kingdom of Saxon times, which included all England south of the Thames and west of Sussex, with the exception of Cornwall. The very excellent sketch-map prepared for the definitive edition of Mr. Hardy’s works very clearly shows the comparative density of the literary settlements he has made. Glancing at it, you at once perceive that what he chooses to term “South Wessex”—named in merely matter-of-fact gazetteers Dorsetshire—is thickly studded with names of his own mintage, unknown to guidebook or ordnance map, and presently observe that the surrounding divisions of Upper, North, Mid, Outer, and Lower Wessex—as who should say Hampshire, Berkshire, Wilts, Somerset, and Devon—are, to follow the simile already adopted, barely colonised.

His nearest frontier-post towards London is Castle Royal, to be identified with none other than Windsor; while near by are Gaymead (Theale), Aldbrickham (Reading), and Kennetbridge (Newbury). In the midst of that same division of North Wessex, or Berkshire, are marked Alfredston and Marygreen, respectively the little town of Wantage, birthplace of Alfred the Great, and the small village of Fawley Magna, placed on the draughty skyline of the bare and shivery Berkshire downs.

Then, near the eastern border of Upper Wessex is Quartershot, or Aldershot, and farther within its confines Stoke-Barehills, by which name Basingstoke and the unclothed uplands partly surrounding it are indicated. Its “gaunt, unattractive, ancient church” is accurately imaged in a phrase, and it is just as true that the most familiar object of the place is “its cemetery, standing among some picturesque mediæval ruins beside the railway”; for indeed Basingstoke cemetery and the fine ruins of the chapel once belonging to the religious who, piously by intent, but rather blasphemously to shocked ears, styled themselves the “Brotherhood of the Holy Ghost,” stand immediately without the railway station. At Stoke-Barehills, Jude and Sue, visiting the Agricultural Show, were observed by Arabella, Jude’s sometime wife, with some jealousy.

Finally, northernmost of all these transfigured outer landmarks, is Christminster, the university town and city of Oxford, whose literary name in these pages derives from the cathedral of Christ there. This remote corner of his kingdom is especially and solely devoted to the grievous story of Jude the Obscure, a pitiful tale of frustrated ambition, originally published serially in Harper’s Magazine, under the much more captivating, if less descriptive, title of Hearts Insurgent. The story opens at Fawley Magna, to whose identity a clue is found in the name of Fawley given the unhappy Jude. The village, we are told, was “as old-fashioned as it was small, and it rested in the lap of an upland adjoining the undulating North Wessex downs. Old as it was, however, the well-shaft was probably the only relic of the local history that remained absolutely unchanged. . . . Above all, the original church, hump-backed, wood-turreted and quaintly hipped, had been taken down, and either cracked up into heaps of road-metal in the lane, or utilised as pigsty walls, garden-seats, guard-stones to fences, and rockeries in the flower-beds of the neighbourhood. In place of it 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.” Who was that obliterator thus held up to satire? Inquiries prove the church to have been rebuilt in 1866, and its architect to have been none other than G. E. Street, R.A., than whom the middle Victorian period had no more accomplished architect. Truly enough, its design is something alien, but candour compels the admission that, however detached from local traditions, it is really a very fine building, and its designer quite undeserving of so slighting a notice.