Thomas Hardy's Dorset

by R. Thurston Hopkins

His body, when long in the ground it had lain,

And time into clay had resolved it again,

A potter found out in its covert so snug,

And with part of fat Toby he form'd this brown jug:

Now sacred to friendship and mirth and mild ale,—

So here's to my lovely sweet Nan of the Vale!"

Far from the Madding Crowd is a novel concerned with Dorchester and the immediate neighbourhood, most of the incidents happening in "Weatherbury" (Puddletown) and "Casterbridge" (Dorchester). On market day at Dorchester one still meets prosperous farmers, stiffly dressed children, lean, tanned, rough-necked labourers caged in their Sunday clothes and stout horse-dealers in grey gaiters and black hats, and it is not difficult to conjure up a picture of the hiring fair mentioned by Hardy, where Gabriel Oak appeared in search of a situation as bailiff. It will be recalled that Bathsheba was in the habit of attending the Casterbridge market to sell her corn, and here she met William Boldwood, who attracted her attention on account of his indifference to her. Bathsheba comes vividly before us with her "debut in the Forum" in the place of her uncle. We can picture her with her beautiful black hair and soft, misty eyes attracting considerable attention as she displayed her sample bags, "adopting the professional pour into the hand, holding up the grains in her narrow palm for inspection in perfect Casterbridge manner." There was "an elasticity in her firmness that removed it from obstinacy," and "a naïveté in her cheapening which saved it from meanness." In a "Casterbridge shop Bathsheba bought the valentine which she sent anonymously to Boldwood to tease him. It was this fatal valentine that drew his attention to Bathsheba, and caused him to fall strongly in love with her, and in the end to shoot Sergeant Troy dead. After this deed Boldwood travelled over Mellstock Hill and Durnover Moor (Fordington Moor) into Casterbridge, and turning into "Bull-Stake Square," halted before an archway of heavy stonework which was closed by an iron-studded pair of doors," and gave himself up for murder.

The White Hart Tavern at "Casterbridge" serves to call to the reader's mind the reappearance of Sergeant Troy, in propria persona, after playing the part of Turpin in a circus at Greenhill Fair.

Yellowham Wood, "Yallam" Wood locally, and the "Yalbury Wood" of Far from the Madding Crowd, is about three miles from Dorchester on the road to Puddletown. In a keeper's cottage here dwelt sweet Fancy Day, and here it was, as told in another novel, that Joseph Poorgrass had the experience the recounting of which used to put that most bashful of men to the blush. "Once he had been working late at Yalbury Bottom, and had had a drop of drink, and lost his way as he was coming home along through Yalbury Wood.... And as he was coming along in the middle of the night, much afeared, and not able to find his way out of the trees nohow, a' cried out, 'Man-a-lost! Man-a-lost!' An owl in a tree happened to be crying 'Whoo-whoo whoo!' as owls do, you know, Shepherd, and Joseph, all in a tremble, said, 'Joseph Poorgrass, of Weatherbury, sir!' 'No, no, now, that's too much,' said the timid man.... 'I didn't say sir.... I never said sir to the bird, knowing very well that no man of a gentleman's rank would be hollerin' there at that time o' night. "Joseph Poorgrass, of Weatherbury," that's every word I said, and I shouldn't ha' said that if't hadn't been for keeper Day's metheglin.'"

Here, as in many other passages, Hardy shows his minute knowledge of nature. He appears to know every sight and sound of animal and bird life, at all seasons of the year. Some readers have perhaps, as they walked in the woods just before the thrushes and blackbirds have finished their evensong, heard the note of the brown owl—a long and somewhat tremulous "Whoo-oo." It is a very musical note, and it does not at all resemble Shakespeare's "To-whit, tu-whoo," which so many other writers have copied. Long may the brown owl live to chant his dim song in "Yallam" Wood—and long may he escape the gun and trap of the gamekeeper! For, of all the cursed and vile things in this world, there is nothing that is worse than the trap that snares some beautiful wild thing and keeps it prisoner for long hours in patient suffering, unrelieved of any hope but of being torn from the cruel teeth and dashed to death against a wall. Yet thousands of owls have been destroyed for the sake of a few pheasants in the coverts, and after all the mischief done by hawks and owls has been greatly exaggerated—it is part of the hereditary ignorance of the rustic. Perhaps if we are in ferny glades of Yellowham Woods "when light on dark is growing" we may hear that curious sound which has been compared to the quacking of a duck with a sore throat, and after it a sniffing sound not unlike a dog might make while scratching at a rat-hole. This is a hedgehog taking his constitutional. The witch in Macbeth says, "Thrice the hedgepig whines," but as my acquaintance with "hedgepigs" goes, their conversation is limited to a "quack" and a "snuff."