“Matth: Tina (Corpl.) in His Majesty’s Regiment of York Hussars, and shot for Desertion, was Buried June 30th, 1801, aged 22 years. Born in the town of Sarrbruk, Germany.”
“Christop Bless, belonging to His Majesty’s Regiment of York Hussars, who was shot for Desertion, was Buried June 30th, 1801, aged 22 years. Born at Lothaargen, Alsatia.”
Returning from Bincombe and down again through Sutton Poyntz to Preston, we come to Osmington, with views down along on the right to Ringstead Bay; but, avoiding for the present the coast, strike inland, to Poxwell, the “Oxwell Hall” of The Trumpet Major. It is really three miles from “Overcombe,” and therefore not the close neighbour to the Lovedays it is made to be, for the purposes of the novel. The church stands beside of the road, the old manor-house, now a farmstead, the home of “Uncle Benjy,” miserly Squire Derriman, close by. In old days, back in 1634, when it was built, this curiously walled-in residence with its outer porter’s lodge, the physical and visible sign of an ever-present distrust of strangers, was a seat of the Henning family. That lodge still stands, obsolete as an avant-garde and gazebo for the timely spying out of unwelcome visitors, but very admirable for a summer-house, if the farmer had leisure for such things. But as he has not, but must continually “plough and sow, and reap and mow,” or see that others do so, the lodge is in every way a derelict. The farmer could perhaps add some testimony of his own respecting all those “romantic excellencies and practical drawbacks,” mentioned in the story, and existing in fact; but, farmers having a bent towards practicality, although they discuss, rather than practise it, it is to be supposed that he would place a stress upon the drawbacks, to the neglect of the romance.
Pursuing the road onwards from Poxwell, we come, in a mile and a half, to the cross-roads at “Warm’ell Cross,” leading on the left to Dorchester, on the right to Wareham, and straight ahead across the remotenesses of “Egdon Heath,” to Moreton station. Here we turn to the right, and so miss the village of Warmwell, whence the cross roads take their name. It is not by any means, to the ordinary traveller, a remarkable crossing of the roads, but it has associations for the pilgrim stored with the literary lore of the Hardy Country, for it was here, in the story of The Distracted Preacher, that Mr. Stockdale, the Wesleyan minister of Nether Mynton, by the aid of their voices, crying “Hoi—hoi—hoi! Help, help!” discovered Will Latimer and the exciseman tied to the trees by the smuggler friends of his Lizzie. Turning here to the right, Owermoigne itself—the “Nether Mynton” of that tale of smuggled spirits and religious scruples—is reached in another mile; the church and its tiny village of thatched rusticity standing shyly, as such a smuggler’s haunt should do, off the broad high road and down a little stumbly and rutty lane. The body of the church has been rebuilt since Lizzie Newberry and her friends stored “the stuff” in the tower and the churchyard, but that churchyard remains the same, as also does the tower from whose battlements the “free traders” spied upon the excisemen, searching for those hidden tubs.
From this road there is a better distant view of the great equestrian effigy of George III., cut in the chalky southern slopes of the downs, than from any other point. He looks impressive, in the ghostly sort, seen across the bare slopes, where perhaps an occasional farmstead or barton, or a row of wheat-ricks, accentuates the solitude and at the same time gives scale to the chalky effigies of His Majesty and that very elegant horse of his, showing how very large this horse and rider really are. The gallant Trumpet Major told about the making of this memorial, as he and Anne Garland walked among the flowering peas, and described what this “huge picture of the king on horseback in the earth of the hill” was to be like: “The King’s head is to be as big as our mill-pond, and his body as big as this garden; he and the horse will cover more than an acre.”
And here he is to this day, very spirited and martial, with his cocked hat and marshal’s baton.
It is, however, a weariful business to arrive in the neighbourhood of him, for those chalk downs are just as inhospitable in the sun as they are in the storms of winter, the only difference lying between being fried on their shelterless sides when the thermometer registers ninety degrees, or frozen when the mercury sinks towards zero.
Some two miles of highway along the verge of Egdon Heath bring us to a right-hand turning, leading past Winfrith Newburgh by a somewhat more shaded route up over the crest of these chalky ranges, and then with several turnings, steeply down, and at length, “by and large”—as sailors say—to the village of West Lulworth, which lies at the inland end of a coombe, the better part of a mile from Lulworth Cove.