The last Turberville of Bere Regis was that Thomas Turberville over whom the ancient vault of his stock finally closed in 1710. His twin daughters and co-heiresses, Frances and Elizabeth, born here in 1703, sold the property and left for London. They died at Purser’s Cross, Fulham, near London, early in 1780, and were buried together at Putney. Shortly afterwards their old manor-house of Bere Regis, standing near the church, was allowed to lapse into ruin, and thus their kin became only a memory where they had ruled so long. Of the old branch of the family settled in Glamorganshire, a Colonel Turberville remains the representative, but the position of the various rustics who in Dorset and Wilts bear the name, corrupted variously into Tollafield and Troublefield, is open to the suspicion that they are the descendants of illegitimate offspring of that race. There remained, indeed, until quite recent years a humble family of “Torevilles” in Bere Regis, one of whom persisted in calling himself “Sir John.” But as Mr. Hardy says, in the course of Tess of the D’Urbervilles, instances of the gradual descent of legitimate scions of the old knightly families, down and again downwards until they have become mere farm-labourers, are not infrequent in Wilts and Dorset. Their high-sounding names have undergone outrageous perversions, as in the stated instance of courtly Paridelle into rustic Priddle; but, although they have inherited no worldly gear they own the same blood.
CHAPTER XV
THE HEART OF THE HARDY COUNTRY
Dorchester is not only the capital of Dorset: it is also the chief town of the Hardy Country. The ancient capital of Wessex was Winchester: the chief seat of this literary domain is here, beside the Frome. Four miles distant from it the novelist was born, and at Max Gate, Fordington, looking down upon Dorchester’s roofs, he resides.
The old country life still closely encircles the county town, and on market-days takes the place by storm; so that when, by midday, most of the carriers from a ten or fifteen miles radius have deposited their country folk, and the farmers have come in on horseback, or driving, or perhaps by train, the slighter forms, less ruddy faces, and more urban dress of the townsfolk are lost amid the great army of occupation that from farms, cottages, dairies, and sheep-pastures, has for the rest of the day taken possession of the streets. The talk is all of the goodness or badness of the hay crop, the prospects of the harvest, how swedes are doing, and the condition of cows, sheep, and pigs; or, if it be on toward autumn, when the hiring of farm-labourers, shepherds, and rural servants in general for the next twelve months is the engrossing topic, then the scarcity of hands and their extravagant demands are the themes of much animated talk.
Dorchester faithfully at such times reflects the image of Dorset, and Dorset remains to this day, and long may it so remain, a great sheep-breeding and grazing county, and equally great as a land of rich dairies. From that suburb of Fordington, which has for so very many centuries been a suburb that to those who know it the name bears no suburban connotation, you may look down, as from a cliff-top, and see the river Frome winding away amid the rich grazing pastures, and with one ear hear the cows calling, while with the other the cries of the newspaper boys are heard in the streets of the town. The scent of the hay and the drowsy hum of the bees break across the top of the bluff, and, just as one may read, in the exquisite description of these things in the pages of The Mayor of Casterbridge, the dandelion and other winged seeds float in at open windows. One may sometimes from this point, when the foliage of its dense screen of trees grows thin, see Stinsford, the “Mellstock” of that idyllic tale, Under the Greenwood Tree; but in general you can see nothing of that sequestered spot until you have reached the by-lane out of the main road from Dorchester, and, turning there to the right, come to Stinsford Church, along a way made a midday twilight by those trees which render the title of that story so descriptive.
Blue wood-smoke, curling up from cottage chimneys against the massed woodlands that surround Kingston House, grey church, largely ivy-covered and plentifully endowed with grotesque gurgoyles—these, with school-house and scattered cottages, make the sum-total of Stinsford, or “Mellstock.” The school-house is that of the young school-mistress, Fancy Day, in the story; and suggests romance; but the sentimental pilgrim may be excused for being of opinion that it is all in the book, with perhaps nothing left over for real life. At any rate, passing it, as the scholars within are, like bees, in Mr. Hardy’s words, “humming small,” one does not linger, but speculates more or less idly which was the cottage where Tranter Dewy lived, and which that of Geoffrey Day, the keeper of Yalbury Great Wood. There are not, after all, many cottages to choose from, and Mr. Hardy has so largely peopled his stories from Mellstock that each one might well be a literary landmark. The Fiddler of the Reels, Mop Ollamoor, a rustic Paganini, whose diabolical cleverness with his violin is the subject of a short story, lived in one of these thatched homes of rural content, and in another was born unhappy Jude the Obscure. In each one of the rest you can imaginatively find the home of a member of that famous Mellstock choir, whose performances and enthusiasm sometimes rose so “glorious grand” that those who wrought with stringed instruments almost sawed through the strings of fiddle and double-bass, and those others whose weapons were of brass blew upon them until they split the seams of their coats and sent their waistcoat-buttons flying with the force of their fervid harmony, in the cumulative strains of Handel and the dithyrambics of Tate and Brady. “Oh! for such a man in our parish,” was thought to be the admiratory attitude of the parson at the fortissimo outburst of a minstrel from a neighbouring village, who had taken a turn with the local choir; but the parson’s pose was less one of admiration than of startled surprise.
All the members of that harmonious, if at times too vigorous, choir are gone to the land where, let us hope, they are quiring in the white robes and golden crowns usually supposed to be the common wear “up along”; and their instruments are perished too:
The knight is dust, his sword is rust,
His soul is with the saints, we trust.