CHAPTER XXVII
WIMBORNE MINSTER TO SHAFTESBURY
(continued)
Onwards from Sturminster Newton the road comes into the rich Vale of Blackmore and traverses levels watered by the Lidden, in addition to the Stour. Turning here to the right-hand and avoiding the way to Stalbridge, we follow the steps of Tess to her home at “Marlott,” a village to be identified with Marnhull.
Could we associate any cottage here with the birthplace of Tess, how interesting a landmark that would be! But it is not to be done. “Rolliver’s,” the “Pure Drop” inn, may be the “Crown,” but you who call there to wet a particularly dry whistle on a scorching day will not find the name of Rolliver over the door, either of this house or of another, with the picture-sign of a dashing hussar outside. As to whether either or both of them keep “a pretty brew,” as we are told Rolliver’s did, I cannot tell you, for when dry, I drink ginger-beer if it is to be got, and, if it isn’t, go thirsty, refusing alike malt-liquors and the abominable gaseous compounds made cheaply of harmful materials, sold expensively, and rather thirst-provoking than quenching.
Marnhull is not precisely the type of village the readers of Tess would picture as the home of a heroine whose adventures have so constant a background of dairying. It is, or was, a quarry-village, and the shallow pits that supplied for stone the church and the cottages are still prominent in a field to the left of the road to Shaftesbury. Thus Marnhull is somewhat formal and prim, and instead of the abundant thatch noticeable in the typical villages of dairy farms, its houses are roofed with slates and tiles.
The church of Marnhull has a singularly fine tower, which, although the details of its Perpendicular design are largely intermingled with Renaissance ornament, is in general outline a beautiful and imposing specimen of Gothic, built in that period—the early eighteenth century—generally thought impossible for Gothic art. It was in 1718 that this fine work arose out of the heap of ruins into which the old tower had suddenly fallen, but it has almost every appearance of being three hundred years older, and it seems likely that, as it now stands, it was a free copy of its predecessor.
The body of the church is of much earlier date, and well supplied with mediæval effigies and finely carved capitals to its pillars. But it is not without amusement that one reads the flamboyant epitaph to the Reverend Mr. Conyers Place, M.A.,
“the youngeft son of an ancient and reputable family in the County of York, who, after he had been liberally educated at Trinity College, in Cambridge, was invited to the Mafter-fhip of the Grammar School in Dorchester, which he governed many years with great succefs and applaufe till, weary of the fatigue of it, he chofe to refign it. He was endowed with many excellent talents, both natural and acquired: a lively wit, a sound judgement, with solid and extenfive learning: he was eminently Studious, yet remarkably facetious: attached to no party, nor addicted to any caufe but that of Truth and Religion, in the defence of whofe Doctrines he wrote many learned and ingenious Treatifes; while he was efteemed by all worthy of the greateft Preferments, he lived content with the praife of deferving without enjoying any but the small Rectory of Poxwell, in this County, which he held two years, and in the Pofsefsion of which he died.”
Shaftesbury, six miles onward from Marnhull, is soon seen, standing as it does majestically upon a commanding hill. It looks perhaps best from the point where the old farmstead of Blynfield stands, at the foot of the long and winding ascent, whence you see the hillside common stretching up to the very edge of the town. From distant points such as this, “Shaston,” as Mr. Hardy, the milestones, and old chroniclers agree to call it, wears the look of another Jerusalem the Golden, and any who, thus looking upon this town of old romance, should chance to come no nearer, might well carry away an impression of a fairy city whose architecture was equal to both its half-legendary history and its natural surroundings. If such a traveller there be, let him rest assured that nothing in Shaftesbury, saving only the view over limitless miles of Vale, stretching away into the distance, is worth the climbing up to it, and that to make its near and intimate acquaintance is only to dispel that distant dream of an unearthly beauty which afar off seems to belong to it.