Oh, the girls were fresh as peaches,
With their tall and tossing figures and their eyes of blue and brown!
And our hearts would ache with longing
As we passed from our sing-songing,
With a smart Clink! Clink! up the Esplanade and down."
The principal attraction of Weymouth is its magnificent bay, which has caused the town to be depicted on the railway posters as the "Naples of England"; but Mr Harper, in his charming book, The Hardy Country, cruelly remarks that no one has yet found Naples returning the compliment and calling itself the "Weymouth of Italy." But there is no need for Weymouth to powder and paint herself with fanciful attractions, for her old-world glamour is full of enchantment. The pure Georgian houses on the Esplanade, with their fine bow windows and red-tiled roofs, are very warm and homely, and remind one of the glories of the coaching days. They are guiltless of taste or elaboration, it is true, but they have an honest savour about them which is redolent of William Cobbett, pig-skin saddles, real ale and baked apples. And those are some of the realest things in the world. There is a distinct "atmosphere" about the shops near the harbour too. They shrink back from the footpath in a most timid way, and each year they seem to settle down an inch or so below the street-level, with the result that they are often entered by awkward steps.
Near the Church of St Mary is the Market, which on Fridays and Tuesdays presents a scene of colour and activity. In the Guildhall are several interesting relics, the old stocks and whipping-posts, a chest captured from the Spanish Armada and a chair from the old house of the Dominican friars which was long ago demolished.
Preston, three miles north-east of Weymouth, is a prettily situated village on the main road to Wareham, with interesting old thatched cottages and a fifteenth-century church containing an ancient font, a Norman door, holy-water stoups and squint. At the foot of the hill a little one-arched bridge over the stream was once regarded as Roman masonry, but the experts now think it is Early Norman work. Adjoining Preston is the still prettier village of Sutton Poyntz, hemmed in by the Downs, on the side of which, in a conspicuous position, is the famous figure, cut in the turf, of King George III. on horseback. He looks very impressive, with his cocked hat and marshal's baton. Sutton Poyntz is the principal locale of Hardy's story of The Trumpet Major. The tale is of a sweet girl, Anne Garland, and two brothers Loveday, who loved her; the "gally-bagger" sailor, Robert, who won her, and John, the easy-going, gentle soldier, who lost her. The Trumpet Major is a mellow, loamy novel, and the essence of a century of sunshine has found its way into the pages. Even the pensiveness of the story—the sadness of love unsatisfied—is mellow. The village to-day, with its tree-shaded stream, crooked old barns and stone cottages, recalls the spirit of the novel with Overcombe Mill as a central theme. How vividly the pilgrim can recall the Mill, with its pleasant rooms, old-world garden, and the stream where the cavalry soldiers came down to water their horses! It was a dearly loved corner of England for John Loveday, and if to keep those meadows safe and fair a life was required, he was perfectly willing to pay the price—nay, more, he was proud and glad to do so. In the end John was killed in one of the battles of the Peninsular War, and his spirit is echoed by a soldier poet who went to his death in 1914:
"Mayhap I shall not walk again
Down Dorset way, down Devon way.