Another charming water trip is by way of that arm of the harbour where there is a confluence of three waters—the creek of Middlebere; the Corfe river, that debouches at Wych Passage House, the ancient port of Corfe Castle; and the Upper Bushey. As someone has fittingly said: "All will agree that a fairer sight than the panorama of Poole and its much-fretted and freakish harbour one would have to go far to see!"
The still meadows that lie around this landlocked haven are green with the growth of centuries; and over the golden corn waving freely on the upland slopes, or above the lavender fields of Broadstone, the lark in summer air is singing. Quietly, with clear spaces of light above them, in silver lapses under the darkening trees, the little rivers thread the fertile valleys, and the Frome runs eastwards from Dorchester, linking, as with a liquid thread, the far-famed county town with the equally ancient maritime port of Wareham.
If this land of Purbeck as a whole has altered but little since the days when our Norman rulers made it a happy hunting ground, its people have changed still less, and its distinctive class—the marblers or quarriers—have been practically unaffected by the tide of civilization that has affected the rest of the county in thought, dress, and customs.
The working of Purbeck marble is one of the oldest industries in the country, for the material was used by the Romans for the lining of sepulchral cists, and in later days it was in great demand for the fashioning of effigies, monuments, pillars, and similar architectural adornments. From Purbeck came the stone for some of the gates of London, for the Cross at Charing, for the abbeys of Westminster and Bindon, and for many portions of the cathedrals of Exeter, Salisbury, and Winchester.
It is a matter for regret that the early history of the Purbeck quarriers is obscure, owing largely to the records of the company having been destroyed by a fire at Corfe Castle. It is generally agreed, however, that they are of Norman descent, for certain names indicative of French origin are still very common among the natives of Corfe and Swanage. Although the trade is a declining one, a good deal of quarrying for the rougher kinds of stone is still carried on by the "Company of Marblers of the Isle of Purbeck". No one but the son of a freeman can become a member of this ancient association, though a freeman's wife is made a freewoman on payment of a shilling—the "marriage shilling" as it is called—so that she may be able to carry on the work should she outlive her husband. One of the articles of the guild, and one that is still rigidly enforced, is that not even a day's work shall be given to a non-member. Some serious disturbances have taken place when attempts have been made to introduce "outside" labour. The most important right claimed by the marblers, the right to enter on any man's land and work the stone, has not been conceded for many years. The natives assert that this concession was granted to them by royal charter, but it is doubtful if their claim could be legally enforced at the present time. The admission of apprentices is governed by a number of curious laws. A "free boy" may enter the quarries and work without being bound, and until he attains his majority he is subject to his father, to whom his wages are supposed to belong by right.
It is to be hoped that the demand for the stone will continue, and that the "Company of Purbeck Marblers" will long remain a link with the dim and distant past.
While in the neighbourhood of Poole the tourist should not fail to visit Wimborne, with its magnificent minster, and Bournemouth, which latter, although just beyond the eastern boundary of Dorset, was the town (Sandbourne) where was enacted almost the final scene of Mr. Hardy's great drama of Tess:
"This fashionable watering-place, with its eastern and its western stations, its piers, its groves of pines, its promenades, and its covered gardens, was, to Angel Clare, like a fairy place suddenly created by the stroke of a wand, and allowed to get a little dusty. An outlying tract of the enormous Egdon Waste was close at hand, yet on the very verge of that tawny piece of antiquity such a glittering novelty as this pleasure city had chosen to spring up. Within the space of a mile from its outskirts every irregularity of the soil was prehistoric; every channel an undisturbed British trackway; not a sod having been turned there since the days of the Cæsars. Yet the exotic had grown here, suddenly as the prophet's gourd; and had drawn hither Tess. By the midnight lamps he went up and down the winding ways of this new world in an old one, and could discern between the trees and against the stars the lofty roofs, chimneys, gazebos, and towers of the numerous fanciful residences of which the place was composed. It was a city of detached mansions; a Mediterranean lounging-place on the English Channel; and as seen now by night it seemed even more imposing than it was. The sea was near at hand, but not intrusive; it murmured, and he thought it was the pines; the pines murmured in precisely the same tones, and he thought they were the sea."
Space fails one to trace the boundaries of the re-created Wessex any further. Very rightly, very thoroughly has the novelist par excellence of our day, appreciated all the nobleness and all the poetry that lies within the area of his chosen mise en scène. Not the least of the services which Mr. Thomas Hardy has rendered us, perhaps even to be prized more than his faithful portraying of rustic character, is his thus revivifying, and by consequence exciting the popular taste for and delight in so interesting a portion of our English homeland.
Nor let it be forgotten that his novels are not altogether fictitious, but are impregnated with authentic social and national history. There is truth enough in his works of fiction to make him a famous historian, omitting altogether what belongs to the proper region of romance.