BLANDFORD TO DORCHESTER
If we return, will England be
Just England still to you and me?
The place where we must earn our bread?--
We who have walked among the dead,
And watched the smile of agony,
And seen the price of Liberty,
Which we have taken carelessly
From other hands. Nay, we shall dread,
If we return,
Dread lest we hold blood-guiltily
The thing that men have died to free.
Oh, English fields shall blossom red
In all the blood that has been shed,
By men whose guardians are we,
If we return.
F. W. HARVEY.
Blandford, or, to give the town its full title, Blandford Forum, gets
its name from the ancient ford of the Stour, on a bend of which river it
is pleasingly placed in the midst of a bountiful district. It is called
"Shottsford Forum" in Hardy's _Far from the Madding Crowd_, and in _The
Woodlanders_ we are told that "Shottsford is Shottsford still: you can't
victual your carcass there unless you've got money, and you can't buy a
cup of genuine there whether or no." The long chief street of the town
has a bright, modern aspect, due to the great fire of 1731 which
destroyed all but forty houses in the place. There is nothing to detain
the pilgrim here, but it makes a good centre for any who are exploring
the country around it.
Five miles of rather hilly road brings us to Winterborne Whitchurch,
which has a very interesting church containing a curious old font dated
1450 and a fine old pulpit removed from Milton. The grandfather of John
and Charles Wesley was vicar here from 1658 to 1662. Of the poet George
Turberville, born here about 1530, very little is known. He was one of
the "wild" Turbervilles, and one would like to learn more about him.
Anyway, here is a specimen of his verse:
"Death is not so much to be feared as Daylie Diseases are.
What? Ist not follie to dread and stand of Death in feare
That mother is of quiet rest, and grief away does weare?
Was never none that twist have felt of cruel Death the Knife;
But other griefes and pining paines doe linger on thro life,
And oftentimes one selfsame corse with furious fits molest
When Death by one dispatch of life doth bring the soul to rest."
When we arrive at Milborne St Andrews we are within eight miles of
Dorchester. The Manor House, up a by-road and past the church of St
Andrew, is the original of "Welland House" in Hardy's _Two on a Tower_.
This was once the residence of the Mansell-Pleydell family, but since
1758 it has been used as a farm-house. The village was formerly an
important posting-place between Blandford and Dorchester, and we are
reminded of the coaching days by the effigy of a white hart on the
cornice of the post office, in time past a busy inn.
Puddletown is our next halt on the road. It is a considerable village
whose church has a chapel full of ancient monuments to the Martins of
Athelhampton. Canon Carter held the living here in 1838, and when he
first arrived the news that he neither shot, hunted nor fished disturbed
the rustic flock, and they openly expressed their contempt for him. Then
he replaced the village church band with a harmonium, and the story
gained so much bulk and robustity in travelling, as such stories do in
the country, that I have no doubt he seemed a sort of devastating
monster.
After this he did a most appalling thing: he tampered with a very
ancient rectorial gift of a mince-pie, a loaf of bread and a quart of
old ale to every individual in the parish, not even excluding the babies
in arms, and ventured to assert that the funds would be better employed
in forming a clothing club for the poor. Carter was a very worthy man,
but somehow I cannot forgive him for this. He should have placed himself
a little nearer to the full current of natural things. In the essence
the ancient gift was "clothing"--solid and straightforward. It was
surely in this spirit that Bishop John Still penned his famous drinking
song:
"No frost nor snow, no wind, I trow,
Can hurt me if I would,
I am so wrapt and throughly lapt
Of jolly good ale and old."
So at the next tithe-day supper at the Rectory a farmer who had in him
the Dorset heart and blood, a very demi-god amongst the poor of
Puddletown, arose in his place and asked the good Canon Carter if he
still held to his purpose of converting the Christmas ale into nether
garments for little boys, and the Canon replied to the effect that it
was his intention to carry out that reform.
Then the farmer, full of the West, who had not come to talk balderdash,
shouted: "I ban't agwaine tu see the poor folk put upon. I'll be blamed
ef I du." His voice was very strong and echoed in the rafters in an
alarming way, for he was of the breed that said "good-morning" to a
friend three fields away without much effort. At this point certain
stuffy people folded their hands, and called out "Fie!" and "Shame!" for
it was their purpose to curry favour with the vicar, they having many
small children in need of nether garments.
But the farmer cried out over them all (and all the other farmers
cheered him on): "I tellee what tez. I don't care a brass button for
you, with all your penny-loaf ways. That to ye all!" And with that he
snapped his fingers in the face of all the company, walked out, mounted
his powerful horse and turned back to his great, spacious farm-house.
Here he counted out a great bundle of Stuckey's Bank notes, and calling
his bailiff sent them post-haste to the landlord of the King's Arms with
word to the effect that they were lodged against a quart of Christmas
ale for every soul who should care to claim it on Christmas Eve. That is
the story of Farmer Dribblecombe, and may we all come out of a trying
position as well as he.
But to return to the church. There are the old oak pews of bygone days,
a choir gallery with the date 1635, an ancient pulpit and a curious
Norman font shaped like a drinking-bowl. The most interesting corner of
the church is the Athelhampton aisle, which is entered through a quaint
archway guarded by a tomb on which lies an armed knight carved in
alabaster. Buried here are the Martins of many generations. They once
owned the old manor-house, with the great barns behind it and the
fertile acres spreading far on every hand. They once went forth swiftly
and strongly, on hefty and determined horses, and worked hotly, and came
in wearied with long rides and adventures. Now they rest together,
"mediævally recumbent," and when their ghosts walk they do not inquire
who owns the land where they tread. They let the hot world go by, and
wait with patience the day when all the old squires of Athelhampton
shall be mustered once again. A great company indeed! The offspring of
one noble family, who, following each other for nearly four hundred
years, ruled as lords of their little holding in Dorset. The first of
the family came to Athelhampton in 1250, and the last in 1595.
Everywhere is to be found carved on their tombs the dark and menacing
motto, beneath their monkey crest, "He who looks at Martins' Ape,
Martins' Ape shall look at him!" The crest is, of course, a play on the
word Martin, which is an obsolete word for ape. But the menace of the
motto has lost its power these three hundred years, and nothing of the
might and affluence of the Martins remains but their mutilated effigies.
I have been wondering to-day how they must look out upon us all with our
cinematographs, jazzy-dances, lip-sticks, backless gowns, cigarettes,
whisky and pick-me-ups, and our immense concern over the immeasurably
trivial. I don't know that I said it aloud--such things need not be said
aloud--but as I read a touching epitaph which urged a little prayer for
two of the family, I turned almost numbly away, while my whole being
seemed to cry out: "God rest your souls, God rest your souls."
Here, since we are on the subject, is the touching prayer from the lips
of one of the ancient house of the Martins:
"Here lyeth the body of Xpofer Martyn Esquyer,
Sone and heyre unto Syr Wm: Martyn, knight,
Pray for their souls with harty desyre
That both may be sure of Eternall Lyght;
Calling to Remembrance that evoy wyhgt
Most nedys dye, and therefore lett us pray
As others for us may do Another day."
The last of the Martins was the Knight Nicholas who was buried here in
1595, and the last passage of his epitaph are the words, "Good-night,
Nicholas!" With these appropriate words they put Nicholas to rest, like
a child who had grown sleepy before it was dark. After all, we are all
children, and when the shadows lengthen and the birds get back to the
protecting eaves, we too grow tired--tired of playing with things much
too large for us--much too full of meaning.
The church of Puddletown, or "Weatherbury," brings us to the crowning
catastrophe of the sad love tale of Francis Troy and Fanny Robin, for it
is the scene of the sergeant's agony of remorse. Having set up a
tombstone over the poor girl's grave, Troy proceeds to plant the mound
beneath with flowers. "There were bundles of snowdrops, hyacinth and
crocus bulbs, violets and double daisies, which were to bloom in early
spring, and of carnations, pinks, picotees, lilies of the valley,
forget-me-not, summer's farewell, meadow saffron, and others, for the
later seasons of the year." The author minutely describes the planting
of these by Troy, with his "impassive face," on that dark night when the
rays from his lantern spread into the old yews "with a strange,
illuminating power, flickering, as it seemed, up to the black ceiling of
cloud above." He works till midnight and sleeps in the church porch; and
then comes the storm and the doings of the gargoyle. The stream of water
from the church roof spouting through the mouth of this "horrible stone
entity" rushes savagely into the new-made grave, turning the mould into
a welter of mud and washing away all the flowers so carefully planted by
Fanny's repentant lover. At the sight of the havoc, we are told, Troy
"hated himself." He stood and meditated, a miserable human derelict.
Where should he turn for sanctuary? But the words that burnt and
withered his soul could not be banished: "He that is accursed, let him
be accursed still."
The ill-named River Piddle--a rippling, tortoiseshell-coloured stream at
times--runs through the streets. An old thatched house is peculiar by
reason of the fact that it has broken out into a spacious Georgian bow
window--a "window worthy of a town hall," as Sir Frederick Treves has
remarked. It is supported by pillars, and has a porch-like space beneath
devoted to a flower-bed.
"Weatherbury Upper Farm," the home of Bathsheba, which she inherited
from her uncle, is not to be found in Puddletown, but if the pilgrim
desires to find it he must proceed up the valley of the Puddle, in the
direction of Piddlehinton. Before reaching the village he will come to
Lower Walterstone, where a fine Jacobean manor-house, bearing the date
1586, will be easily recognised as the original which Thomas Hardy made
to serve as the "Upper Farm" in _Far from the Madding Crowd_.
In the story the author has placed the farm a mile or more from its
actual position, and it is vividly portrayed:
"A hoary building, of the Jacobean stage of Classic Renaissance as
regards its architecture, and of a proportion which told at a glance
that, as is so frequently the case, it had once been the manorial hall
upon a small estate around it, now altogether effaced as a distinct
property, and merged in the vast tract of a non-resident landlord, which
comprised several such modest demesnes. Fluted pilasters, worked from
the solid stone, decorated its front, and above the roof pairs of
chimneys were here and there linked by an arch, some gables and other
unmanageable features still retaining traces of their Gothic extraction.
Soft brown mosses, like faded velveteen, formed cushions upon the stone
tiling, and tufts of the house-leek or sengreen sprouted from the eaves
of the low surrounding buildings. A gravel walk leading from the door to
the road in front was encrusted at the sides with more moss--here it was
a silver-green variety, the nut-brown of the gravel being visible to the
width of only a foot or two in the centre. This circumstance, and the
generally sleepy air of the whole prospect here, together with the
animated and contrasting state of the reverse façade, suggested to the
imagination that on the adaptation of the building for farming purposes
the vital principle of the house had turned round inside its body to
face the other way."