Lady Penelope, in Hardy's A Group of Noble Dames, was not an imaginary character, but a noble dame in real life. She was a daughter of Lord Darcy and in turn married George Trenchard, Sir John Gale and Sir William Hervey. She is described in Hardy's story as "a lady of noble family and extraordinary beauty. She was of the purest descent.... She possessed no great wealth ... but was sufficiently endowed. Her beauty was so perfect, and her manner so entrancing, that suitors seemed to spring out of the ground wherever she went." The three suitors mentioned above would not be repulsed, and she jestingly promised to marry all three in turn. In the end Fate determined that her jest should fall true. First Penelope married Sir George Trenchard, who in the course of a few months died. A little while after she became the wife of Sir John Gale, who treated her rather badly. Two or three years after he died and Sir William Hervy came forward. In a short time she became Hervy's wife, and thus her promise, which was made so lightly, became an established fact. But the canker-worm of rumour attributed the death of Sir John Gale to poison given him by his wife, and Sir William, believing it, went abroad and remained there. Penelope divined the cause of his departure, and she grieved so much that at last nothing—not even Sir William's return—availed to save her, and she died broken-hearted. Sir William afterwards was assured by the doctor who had examined Gale's body that there was no ground for the cruel suspicions, and that his death resulted from natural causes.
The road continues through Charminster, a large and scattered village, and steadily ascends to Godmanston, five miles from Dorchester.
A mile beyond, the road still rising, is Nether Cerne, with a tiny church, prettily situated. Steadily climbing another two miles, we reach Cerne Abbas, an exceedingly interesting little place, surrounded by chalk hills, on the River Cerne. It derives its distinguishing name from an abbey, which was founded in memory of Edmund the Martyr, King of East Anglia, who met his death at the hands of the Danes A.D. 870. It was erected about a hundred years later and was a place of some importance. Canute plundered the church. Here Margaret of Anjou sought refuge on the day following her landing at Weymouth, when she received tidings of the defeat of her cause at the battle of Barnet, 1471. The remains consist of a gate-house, bearing the escutcheon of the abbey, and those of the Earl of Cornwall, Fitz-James and Beauford; the abbey-barn, a long, buttressed building, and some traces of the park and gardens.
The church, dedicated to St Mary, is of Perpendicular style and supposed to have been built by the abbots.
Immediately above the town rises a lofty eminence, popularly called the Giant's Hill, from an uncouth colossal figure cut on its chalky surface. It represents a man, 180 feet in height, holding in his right hand a club and stretching forth the other. "Vulgar tradition," says Britton, "makes this figure commemorate the destruction of a giant, who, having feasted on some sheep in Blackmoor, and laid himself to sleep on this hill, was pinioned down, like another Gulliver, and killed by the enraged peasants, who immediately traced his dimensions for the information of posterity." On the summit of the hill is an entrenchment called Trendle (i.e. a circle, Saxon). The Cerne giant is believed by some authorities to be of Phœnician origin and to represent Baal, but no one really knows much about him, and, it must be also added, the Dorset rustic cares very little about the matter.
CHAPTER VI A LITERARY NOTE: THOMAS HARDY AND WILLIAM BARNES
Thomas Hardy is a Dorset man both by birth and residence. He was born on 2nd June 1840, in a pretty, thatched cottage in the hamlet of Higher Bockhampton. If one takes the London road out of Dorchester, a walk of a mile and a turn to the right will lead to the village of Stinsford; passing this hamlet and keeping to the road which crosses Kingston Park, a turn to the left breaks on to Higher Bockhampton. The house stands on the edge of Thorncombe Wood, skirting Bockhampton Heath, but Hardy has told us that within the last fifty years the wood enclosed the house on every side.