DORCHESTER TO CROSS-IN-HAND, MELBURY, AND YEOVIL
A GOOD many outlying literary landmarks of the Wessex novels may be
cleared up by leaving Dorchester by Charminster, and then, at a fork in
the road just past Wolveton, taking the left-hand turning and following
for awhile the valley road along the course of the river Frome. Not for
long, however, if it is desired to keep strictly to those landmarks, do
we pursue this easy course, for in another couple of miles, by Grimstone
station, we shall have to bear to the right hand and make for what is
known in Mr. Hardy’s pages as “Long Ash Lane,” along whose almost
interminable course Farmer Darton and his friend rode, to the wooing of
Sally Hall, at Great Hintock, in that short story, _Interlopers at the
Knap_.
Long Ash Lane—in some editions of the novels styled “Holloway Lane”—is
the middle one of three roads past Grimstone station. Those on either
side lead severally to Maiden Newton—the “Chalk Newton” of _Tess of the
D’Urbervilles_—and to Sydling St. Nicholas; but this is, as described in
that story, “a monotonous track, without a village or hamlet for many
miles, and with very seldom a turning.” For its own sake, it will
therefore be easily seen, Long Ash Lane is not an altogether desirable
route. It is an ancient Roman road, running eventually to Yeovil and
Ilchester; passing near by, but not touching, and always out of sight of
several small villages on its lengthy way. Darton and Johns found it
weariful as they rode, the hedgerow twigs on either side “currycombing
their whiskers,” as Mr. Hardy delightfully says; and wayfarers on foot,
tired out, believe at last that it will never end:
“Unapprised wayfarers, who are too old, or too young, or in other
respects too weak for the distance to be traversed, but who,
nevertheless, have to walk it, say, as they look wistfully ahead: ‘Once
at the top of that hill, and I must surely see the end of Long Ash Lane!’
But they reach the hill-top, and Long Ash Lane stretches in front
mercilessly as before.”
After many miles this tiresome road at last comes in touch with modern
life, for Evershot station and the hamlet of Holywell are placed directly
beside it. Here we may turn right, or turn left, or go onward, sure in
all directions of finding many scenes to be identified with the novels.
Turning to the right, a road not altogether dissimilar in its loneliness
from Long Ash Lane is found, but differing from it in the one essential
respect of ascending the ridge of lofty downs overlooking the Vale of
Blackmoor, and thus, while to the right hand disclosing a dull expanse of
table-land, on the left opening out a romantic view, bounded only by
distance and the inadequacies of human eyesight. This is the road along
which Tess was travelling—in the reverse direction—from Dole’s Ash Farm
at Plush, the “Flintcombe Ash” of those tragical pages, to Beaminster or
“Emminster,” to visit the parents of Angel Clare, her husband, when she
came to that ill-fated meeting with Alec D’Urberville at the spot we now
approach, Cross-in-Hand:
“At length the road touched the spot called ‘Cross-in-Hand.’ Of all
spots on the bleached and desolate upland this was the most forlorn. It
was so far removed from the charm which is sought in landscape by artists
and view-lovers as to reach a new kind of beauty, a negative beauty of
tragic tone. The place took its name from a stone pillar which stood
there, a strange rude monolith, from a stratum unknown in any local
quarry, on which was roughly carved a human hand.”
The history and meaning of this lonely pillar on the solitary ridgeway
road are unknown. Thought by some to mark the old-time bounds of
property under the sway of the Abbot of Cerne, others have considered it
to be the relic of a wayside cross, while others yet have held it to be a
place of meeting of the tenants and feudatories of the old abbey, and the
hollow in the stone to have been the receptacle for their tribute. But,
“whatever the origin of the relic, there was and is something sinister,
or solemn, according to mood, in the scene amid which it stands;
something tending to impress the most phlegmatic passer-by.”
Here it was that Tess, on her way to Flintcombe Ash, was surprised by the
converted Alec D’Urberville, already shaken in his new-found grace and
preaching mission at sight of her, and here he made her swear upon it
never to tempt him by her charms or ways. “This was once a Holy Cross,”
said he. “Relics are not in my creed, but I fear you at moments.” It
was not very reassuring to Tess when, leaving the spot of this singular
rencounter and asking a rustic if the stone were not a Holy Cross, he
replied, “Cross—no; ’twer not a cross! ’Tis a thing of ill-omen, miss.
It was put up in wuld times by the relations of a malefactor, who was
tortured there by nailing his hand to a post and afterwards hung. The
bones lie underneath. They say he sold his soul to the devil, and that
he walks at times.”
[Picture: Cross-in-Hand]
This pillar, “the scene of a miracle or murder, or both,” stands some
five feet in height, and rises from the unfenced grassy selvedge of the
road, where the blackberry bushes and bracken grow, on the verge of the
down that breaks precipitously away to the vale where Yetminster lies.
The rude bowl-shaped capital of the mystic stone has the coarse semblance
of a hand, displayed in the manner of the Bloody Hand of Ulster.
[Picture: Batcombe]
Deep down below, in midst of the narrowest lanes, lies the sequestered
village of Batcombe, from which this down immediately above takes its
name. The church stands almost in the shadow of the hills. This also is
a place of marvellous legends, for a battered old Gothic tomb in the
churchyard, innocent of inscription, standing near the north wall of the
church, is, according to old tales the resting-place of one “Conjuring
Minterne,” a devil-compeller and astrologer of sorts, who was originally
buried half in and half out of the church, for fear his master, “the
horny man,” as a character in one of Mr. Hardy’s romances calls Old Nick,
should have him, if buried otherwise. One would like to learn more about
“Conjuring Minterne” and his strange tricks, but history is silent.
Returning to Evershot, or, as it is styled in the sources of our
pilgrimage, “Evershead,” we come to Melbury Park, the seat of the Earl of
Ilchester, and the principal scene of that charming story, _The First
Countess of Wessex_, in the collection of “A Group of Noble Dames.” The
great house of oddly diversified architecture, stands in the midst of
this nobly wooded and strikingly varied domain, but can readily be seen,
for the carriage-drive is a public right of way. This is the broad
roadway through the park described in the passage where Tupcombe, riding
towards “King’s Hintock Court”—as Mr. Hardy disguises the identity of the
place—from Mells, on Squire Dornell’s errand, saw it stretching ahead
“like an unrolled deal shaving.”
Like most of the stories of those noble dames, this romance of Betty
Dornell, the First Countess of Wessex, is founded upon actual people, and
largely upon their real doings. Squire Dornell of Falls Park—really
Mells Park—was in real life that Thomas Horner who in 1713 married
Susannah Strangways, heiress of the Strangways family and owner of
Melbury Sampford; and their only child was Elizabeth, born in 1723, who
in 1736, in her thirteenth year, almost precisely as in the story, was
married to Stephen Fox, afterwards Earl of Ilchester, who died in 1776.
The Countess died in 1792.
[Picture: Tomb of “Conjuring Minterne”]
But this passage of family history is best set forth in the manner
customary to genealogists:
[Picture: Family tree of Thomas Horner of Mells] {174}
The father of the first Countess of Wessex was, it is curious to know,
descended from Little Jack Horner, that paragon of selfishness who sat in
a corner, eating his Christmas pie, and who, the familiar nursery rhyme
goes on to tell us,
“Put in his thumb and pulled out a plum,
And said, What a good boy am I!”
The nursery rhyme was that, and something more. It was, in fact a satire
upon that John Horner who, upon the dissolution of the monasteries,
purchased for much less than it was worth the confiscated Mells estate of
Glastonbury Abbey. This prize, the “plum” of the rhyme, is said to have
been worth £10,000. The Horners, represented by Sir John Horner,
espoused the side of the Parliament in the war with Charles I. but they
have kept their plum, at every hazard and in all chances, and Mells Park
is still in the family.
[Picture: Melbury House]
Leland tells how the house of Melbury Park was built in the sixteenth
century by Sir Giles Strangways, but portions of the great T-shaped
building have at later times been added, notably the wing built in the
time of Queen Anne. The whole heterogeneous pile, dominated by a
church-like, six-sided central tower, occupies a raised grassy site
looking upon a lake on whose opposite shore is the little manorial church
of Melbury Sampford, plentifully stored with monuments of Strangways and
Fox-Strangways, and in especial notable for that to the courtly and
equable husband of Betty Dornell. His epitaph, by the hand of his widow,
describes him as the most desirable of husbands.
Near this stone is interred
Stephen, Earl of Ilchester,
who died at Melbury
Sept. 26, A.D. MDCCLXXVI., aged LXXII.
He was the eighth son of Sir Stephen Fox, knight.
He married Elizabeth, only daughter of Thomas Horner,
of Mells, in the county of Somerset, esquire,
heiress-general to the family of
Strangways of Melbury, in the county of Dorset,
by whom he had Henry Thomas, his eldest son,
now Earl of Ilchester
(who succeeds him in honours and estate)
and a numerous offspring.
As a small token of her great affection
to the best of husbands, fathers, friends,
his disconsolate widow inscribes this marble,
Sacred to his memory.
Hush’d be the voice of bards who heroes praise,
And high o’er glory’s sun their pæans raise;
And let an artless Muse a friend review,
Whose tranquil Life one blameless tenour knew,
By Nature form’d to please, of happiest mien,
Just, friendly, chearful, affable, serene;
Engaging Manners, cultivated Mind,
Adorn’d by Letters and in Courts refin’d,
His blooming honours long approv’d he bore,
And added lustre to that gem he wore;
Grac’d with all pow’rs to shine, he left parade,
And unambitious lov’d the sylvan shade;
The choice by Heav’n applauded stood confess’d
And all his Days with all its blessing bless’d;
Living belov’d, lamented in his end,
Unfading Bliss his mortal change attend.
At the other extremity of the park is the small and secluded village of
Melbury Osmund, the “Little Hintock” of _The Woodlanders_, “one of those
sequestered spots outside the gates of the world, where may usually be
found more meditation than action, and more listlessness than
meditation.” It lies among vast hills and profound hollows, whose huge
convexities and corresponding concavities render this a district to be
more comfortably ridden by the horseman than walked, and one to be
explored by the cyclist only with great and exhausting labour.
By perspiring perseverance, however, Yeovil and Somerset, or, speaking by
the card, “Ivell” and “Outer Wessex” may be reached at last, by way of
the strangely-entitled village of Ryme Intrinsica, whose name, so spelled
on the map, is, with considerable incertitude both as to spelling and
meaning, said to be properly written “Entrenseca” or “Entrensicca.”
Local theories, disregarding altogether the inexplicable “Ryme,” and
expending themselves upon the preposterous Latinity of the second part of
the name, have come to some sort of agreement that it denotes a dry place
on a ridge placed between two watered vales; and those curious enough to
look for it on a large-scale map will perceive readily enough that,
whatever the comparative dryness of the ridge it does occupy, it is
certainly so flanked by the low-lying lands in which flow two tributaries
of the river Yeo.
Hutchins, the county historian, on the other hand, gives a wholly
different explanation of the name. Spelling the “Intrinseca” with an
“e,” instead of the final “i,” he says it is so called, Ryme Intrinseca,
or “In Ryme,” in contradistinction to an outlying portion of the old
manor, away down in the parish of Long Bredy, and styled Ryme
Extrinsecus, or “Out Ryme.”
At any rate, Ryme Intrinsica looks scarcely the place to be dolled out in
so classical a style. It is too Saxon, too rustic and homespun in all
its circumstances of thatch, rickyards, dairies, and pigsties; and its
little church is not in any way corroborative of this dignity.
Yeovil, whose name has so bucolic a sound that it would seem to be, above
all other places, the home most suitable for yeomen, is the “Ivell” of
the Wessex novels, but finds only scattered allusions in them, and
touches far from intimate. Cope, the curate, who in the story _For
Conscience’ Sake_ married the conscience-smitten Millborne’s daughter
when at last the father effaced himself, was curate at Ivell; and it was
at the “Castle” inn of the same town that the brothers Halborough called
for their drunken father, in the harrowing embarrassments of _A Tragedy
of two Ambitions_, but those are the nearest approaches to be discovered.