To Lulworth—or as he terms it, Lullstead—Cove, Mr. Hardy returns again and again. It is the “small basin of sea enclosed by the cliffs” where Troy bathed and was supposed to have been drowned; it is one of the spots where The Distracted Preacher’s parishioners landed their smuggled spirit-tubs, and upon its milk-white shores of limestone pebbles the lifeless bodies of Stephen Hardcombe and his companion were found. It was the first meeting-place of Cytherea Graye and Edward Springrove; and was, again, that “three-quarter round Cove” where, “screened from every mortal eye,” save his own, Solomon Selby observed Bonaparte questing along the darkling shore for a suitable place where his flotilla might land in his projected invasion of England.
Lulworth Cove is an almost perfect circle, eaten out of the limestone in the long ago by the sea, in an unusually geometrical manner. Bindon Hill frowns down upon it, and in summer the circle of light-blue water laughs saucily back, in little sparkling ripples, just as though there were no storms in nature and no cruel rock-bound coast outside. The Cove is, if you be classically minded, a Bath of the Naiads; and, if less imaginative, is at any rate a delightful spot that even in these tidied-up and ordered days, when every little seaside cove has its hair brushed and face scrubbed, and is made always to look its Sunday best, persists in being littered with a longshore fishing and boating medley of anchors and lobster-pots, ropes, chains and windlasses, infinitely more pleasing to right-thinking persons—by whom I indicate those who think with myself—than the neatest of promenades and seats. True, they have rebuilt or enlarged the Cove Hotel and red-brick manifestations of a growing favour with visitors are springing up beside the old thatched cottages; but Lulworth—Cove or village—is not spoiled yet. The Coastguard Station, perched on what looks like a hazardous pinnacle of cliff, with the wild chasm of Stair Hole to one side of it and the sheer drop into the Cove on the other, is the most striking feature, looking down from landward, of this curious place, which has not its fellow anywhere else, and is the sunniest, the ruggedest, and certainly the most treeless place along the Dorset coast.
To those who have persevered along the roads into Lulworth, the prospect of again climbing those hills is perhaps a little grim, and they should so contrive to time their arrival and departure that they comfortably fit in with the return to Weymouth of the excursion steamer plying in the tourist season between the two places.
CHAPTER XXIV
BOURNEMOUTH TO POOLE