A good many outlying literary landmarks of the Wessex novels may be cleared up by leaving Dorchester by Charminster, and then, at a fork in the road just past Wolveton, taking the left-hand turning and following for awhile the valley road along the course of the river Frome. Not for long, however, if it is desired to keep strictly to those landmarks, do we pursue this easy course, for in another couple of miles, by Grimstone station, we shall have to bear to the right hand and make for what is known in Mr. Hardy’s pages as “Long Ash Lane,” along whose almost interminable course Farmer Darton and his friend rode, to the wooing of Sally Hall, at Great Hintock, in that short story, Interlopers at the Knap.
Long Ash Lane—in some editions of the novels styled “Holloway Lane”—is the middle one of three roads past Grimstone station. Those on either side lead severally to Maiden Newton—the “Chalk Newton” of Tess of the D’Urbervilles—and to Sydling St. Nicholas; but this is, as described in that story, “a monotonous track, without a village or hamlet for many miles, and with very seldom a turning.” For its own sake, it will therefore be easily seen, Long Ash Lane is not an altogether desirable route. It is an ancient Roman road, running eventually to Yeovil and Ilchester; passing near by, but not touching, and always out of sight of several small villages on its lengthy way. Darton and Johns found it weariful as they rode, the hedgerow twigs on either side “currycombing their whiskers,” as Mr. Hardy delightfully says; and wayfarers on foot, tired out, believe at last that it will never end:
“Unapprised wayfarers, who are too old, or too young, or in other respects too weak for the distance to be traversed, but who, nevertheless, have to walk it, say, as they look wistfully ahead: ‘Once at the top of that hill, and I must surely see the end of Long Ash Lane!’ But they reach the hill-top, and Long Ash Lane stretches in front mercilessly as before.”
After many miles this tiresome road at last comes in touch with modern life, for Evershot station and the hamlet of Holywell are placed directly beside it. Here we may turn right, or turn left, or go onward, sure in all directions of finding many scenes to be identified with the novels. Turning to the right, a road not altogether dissimilar in its loneliness from Long Ash Lane is found, but differing from it in the one essential respect of ascending the ridge of lofty downs overlooking the Vale of Blackmoor, and thus, while to the right hand disclosing a dull expanse of table-land, on the left opening out a romantic view, bounded only by distance and the inadequacies of human eyesight. This is the road along which Tess was travelling—in the reverse direction—from Dole’s Ash Farm at Plush, the “Flintcombe Ash” of those tragical pages, to Beaminster or “Emminster,” to visit the parents of Angel Clare, her husband, when she came to that ill-fated meeting with Alec D’Urberville at the spot we now approach, Cross-in-Hand:
“At length the road touched the spot called ‘Cross-in-Hand.’ Of all spots on the bleached and desolate upland this was the most forlorn. It was so far removed from the charm which is sought in landscape by artists and view-lovers as to reach a new kind of beauty, a negative beauty of tragic tone. The place took its name from a stone pillar which stood there, a strange rude monolith, from a stratum unknown in any local quarry, on which was roughly carved a human hand.”
The history and meaning of this lonely pillar on the solitary ridgeway road are unknown. Thought by some to mark the old-time bounds of property under the sway of the Abbot of Cerne, others have considered it to be the relic of a wayside cross, while others yet have held it to be a place of meeting of the tenants and feudatories of the old abbey, and the hollow in the stone to have been the receptacle for their tribute. But, “whatever the origin of the relic, there was and is something sinister, or solemn, according to mood, in the scene amid which it stands; something tending to impress the most phlegmatic passer-by.”
Here it was that Tess, on her way to Flintcombe Ash, was surprised by the converted Alec D’Urberville, already shaken in his new-found grace and preaching mission at sight of her, and here he made her swear upon it never to tempt him by her charms or ways. “This was once a Holy Cross,” said he. “Relics are not in my creed, but I fear you at moments.” It was not very reassuring to Tess when, leaving the spot of this singular rencounter and asking a rustic if the stone were not a Holy Cross, he replied, “Cross—no; ’twer not a cross! ’Tis a thing of ill-omen, miss. It was put up in wuld times by the relations of a malefactor, who was tortured there by nailing his hand to a post and afterwards hung. The bones lie underneath. They say he sold his soul to the devil, and that he walks at times.”
This pillar, “the scene of a miracle or murder, or both,” stands some five feet in height, and rises from the unfenced grassy selvedge of the road, where the blackberry bushes and bracken grow, on the verge of the down that breaks precipitously away to the vale where Yetminster lies. The rude bowl-shaped capital of the mystic stone has the coarse semblance of a hand, displayed in the manner of the Bloody Hand of Ulster.
