The “Wishing Well” is a pretty spot, overhung with trees and still a place resorted to by tourists, who either shamefacedly, with an implied half-belief in its virtues, drink its waters, or else with the quip and jest of unbelief, defer the slaking of their thirst until the nearest inn is reached, where liquors more palatable to the sophisticated taste—or what Mr. Hardy’s rustics would term “a cup of genuine”—are obtainable. Once the haunt of gipsies, who used the well as a convenient pitch, and, when you crossed their palms with silver in the approved style, prophesied fulfilment of the nicest things you could possibly wish yourself—and a good many other things that would never occur to you at all—it is now quite unexploited, save perhaps by a little village girl, who, with a glass tumbler, will save the devotee from stooping on hands and knees and lapping up the magic water, like a dog. The gipsies have been all frightened away by the Vagrants Act, and no great loss to the community in general. The inquisitive stranger, curious to know whether the villagers themselves resort to their famous Fount of Heart’s Desire, receives a rude shock when he is told by one of them that, “Bless ’ee, there baint a varden’s wuth o’ good in ’en, at arl. Mebbe ’tis good ver a whist (a stye) but all them ’ere magicky tales be done away wi’.” The Age of Faith is dead.

And so into Weymouth, down a road lined with long rows of suburbs. Radipole is come to this complexion at last, and its spa is, like a service rendered and a benefit conferred, a thing clean forgot.

CHAPTER XX

WEYMOUTH

Well, then, here, reaching a Modern church with a tall spire, surrounded by suburban villas, is the beginning of Weymouth. The sea in these miles has dropped gradually down, out of sight as the road comes to the level, and at this point you might, to all intents and purposes, be at North Kensington, which the spot greatly resembles. But turning sharply with the road to the right the derogatory illusion is at once dispelled, for the sea is out there, sparkling, to the left; and, in the perfect segment of a circle, the Esplanade of Weymouth goes sweeping round to the harbour, with the Nothe Point fort above, and, away out in the distance, that towering knob of limestone, the Isle of Portland. It is a stimulating view, and has generally other and even more stimulating constituents than those of nature, for Weymouth and Portland are places of arms, and the ships of the Navy are usually represented by a squadron of cruisers well in shore, with a brace or two of battleships coming, going, or anchored easily in sight, and numbers of those ugly, imp-like craft, torpedo-boats, flying hither and thither.

Weymouth styles itself—or others style it—“the Naples of England,” but no one has ever yet found Naples returning the compliment and calling itself “the Weymouth of Italy.” There is really no reason why Weymouth, instead of seeking some fanciful resemblance based solely, it may be supposed on the configuration of its widely curving bay, should not stand or fall by the sufficing attractions of its own charming self. For one thing, it would be impossible to persuade the public that Weymouth owns a Vesuvius somewhere away in its hinterland, and, although the country is rich in Roman camps, no antiquary has yet discovered a Pompeii midway between Melcombe Regis and Dorchester.

The town is still in essentials the Weymouth of George III., the “Budmouth” of Thomas Hardy. They are, it is true, the battleships of Edward VII. wallowing out there, like fat pigs, where of yore the wooden men-o’-war swam the waters like swans; but the houses at least, that face the Esplanade in one almost unbroken row, each one like its neighbour and all absolutely innocent either of taste or pretension, are characteristically Georgian. Taken individually and examined, one might go greater lengths, and say such a house was more than insipid and commonplace—was, indeed, downright ugly—but in a long curving row the effect is a comprehensive one of dignified restraint. At any rate, they are constructed of good honest dull red brick, and not plastered and made to look like stone. This bluff honesty in these days of shams and of restless, worried-looking designs, when every new building must have its own ready-made picturesqueness, and this total absence of anything and everything that by remotest chance could be thought an ornament, is grateful.

We speak of this as “Weymouth,” but it is rather, to speak by the card, Melcombe Regis, and although the interests of both this and of Weymouth proper, on the other side of the narrow neck of harbour, are now pooled, it was once a sign of ignorance and a certain offence not to carefully distinguish between the two. Their rivalries and jealousies were of old so bitter that the river-mouth and harbour, long since bridged to make a continuous street, was like a stream set between two alien states. The passage was then “by a bote and a rope bent over ye haven, so yt in ye fery bote they use no ores.”

These disputes and contentions had risen almost to the condition of a smouldering petty local warfare in the time of Queen Elizabeth, when means were taken to put an end to it. Thus in 1571 they were compelled to unite, and in the familiar phrase of fairy tales have “lived happily ever after.” Says Camden: “These stood both some time proudlie upon their owne severall priviledges, and were in emulation one of the other, but now, tho’ (God turne it to the good of both!) many, they are, by authoritie of Parliament, incorporated into one bodie, conjoyned by late by a bridge, and growne very much greater and goodlier in buildings and by sea adventures than heretofore.”

But things widely different from trade have in later times made the fortune of the conjoined towns of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis. I suppose the one or the other of them was bound in the course of time to be “discovered” as a bathing-resort, but it is to George III. that Weymouth owes a deep debt of gratitude. His son had already “discovered” Brighthelmstone, or rather, had placed the seal of his approval upon Dr. Russel’s earlier discovery of it; and likewise Weymouth was already on the road to recognition when George III. came here first, in 1789. Thirty years or so earlier, when people had begun as a strange new experience, to bathe, the sands of Weymouth—or to adopt an attitude of strict correctitude, the sands of Melcombe Regis—were on the way to appreciation. Then greater folks lending their august patronage where that of meaner people had little weight, the place was resorted to by the famous Ralph Allen of Bath, for whom in 1763 the first bathing-machine was constructed, and by a stream of visitors gradually ascending in the social scale. The place long found favour with the Duke of Gloucester, by whose recommendation the king was induced to make a visit and then a lengthy stay, placing the apex at last upon this imposing pyramid of good fortune. It was no fleeting glimpse of royal favour thus accorded, for with the coming of summer the king for many years resided here at Gloucester Lodge, the mansion facing the sea built by his brother the Duke of Gloucester, and now the staid and grave Gloucester Hotel. Weymouth basked happily in the splendours of that time. They were splendours of the respectable domestic sort generally associated with that homely monarch, who bathed from his machine in full view of his loyal lieges and then went home to boiled mutton and turnips. He made sober holiday on the Dorset coast while his graceless son was on the coast of Sussex rearing a fantastical palace and playing pranks fully matching it in extravagance of design and purse.