the darkness across the ferry to South Haven, and left us, pilgrims
in a strange land, upon the sands of the Dorset shore. We groped an
unconscionable time amid sand-wreaths and hummocks, coming at length,
by favour of Providence, to a low cliff covered with brambles, which
we climbed, and then found ourselves by sense of touch in a narrow
drong, dark as Erebus, by reason (it should seem) of tall elms whose
branches met overhead. This we traversed with outstretched arms and
came to Studland church, whose tower was dimly visible where the lane
broadened, and the trees drew back their sullen plumes. To church
succeeded village, thus to dignify the few houses we discovered, Only
one illuminated pane bore testimony to the neighbourhood of human
beings: the one inn of the place was close-shuttered, lifeless. We
thumped upon the door of that unchristian sot-house, and nothing
answered our summons, only the sough of the wind in the trees. We
knocked and kicked upon that door with such right good will that the
churl between the sheets in an upstairs chamber (who must have heard
our earliest tapping) was beset by fears for his door panels, and
rising, unlatched the lattice overhead, and querulously inquired what
we would of him.
“Why, a bed,” we shouted, in chorus.
“Ye’ll get no bed here to-night,” said that licensed victualler; “the
missus ain’t at hand, an’ I don’t know nothen about it. Good night
t’ye.”
He slammed the casement, and we were left alone. We were consulting our
map by the light of matches when a kindly villager took compassion upon
us, and suggested that we should set out for Swanage. He guided us to
the top of a soaring hill called Ballard Down, and showed us Swanage
lights glistening far below.
Here, at the Ship Hotel, we found our rest at 12.30, upon an impromptu
bed, contrived upon the coffee-room floor, and slept the sleep that
only strenuous tourists can know.
XXI.
Here we were fairly come into the Isle of Purbeck, which indeed is no
isle at all, save by a stretch of fact and imagination. Bounded on
the north by Poole Harbour and the river Frome, on the east and south
by the sea, the little brook of Luckford Lake runs to meet the Frome
only along a portion of Purbeck’s western side, the remainder of that
frontier being along a succession of especially tall hills which run
down to Worbarrow Bay.
Swanage, it may be supposed, is the capital of Purbeck to-day, although
of old Corfe was used to be so considered.
It has ever been the outlet for the stone quarried in the island, and
of the famous Purbeck marble--that grey, fossil-spangled mineral,
familiar to archæologists throughout England as a favourite material
centuries ago for the construction of altar-tombs and fonts. It was
shipped here continuously until the new railway was brought down from
Wareham; now it goes hence mostly by rail.
Swanage strikes the casual visitor as being some sort of an appanage
to that firm of contractors, Mowlem & Burt, for everywhere is the
name of Mowlem in Swanage. Indeed, John Mowlem, the senior member of
the firm, was born here. He traced his ancestry back to a De Moulham
to whom the Conqueror gave a manor of that name in Purbeck, and to
strengthen his associations with the town, he repurchased lands here
that had once been in that family. He died in 1869. It was he and Mr.
Burt who brought about the importation to Swanage of the pinnacled
Clock-tower that stands in the gardens of The Grove, overlooking
the sea. It had once occupied a position on Old London Bridge, and
commemorated the victories of Wellington. When the bridge was rebuilt,
the Clock-tower was found to be in the way, and no one knew what to
do with it. Eventually it was presented to Mr. Docwra, of The Grove,
who sent it down from London in pieces, and rebuilt it here. Thus are
the Wellington monuments moved on from place to place by some strange
fate. The hideous statue that, at Hyde Park Corner, avenged France
for Waterloo, has been relegated to the Fox Hills, at Aldershot; and
the monument in Saint Paul’s Cathedral, never yet finished, has been
removed from its chapel to a newer site in the nave: the equestrian
statue, too, that stands in front of the Royal Exchange, although still
_in situ_, has had a nameless abomination contrived around and below it.
Swanage, like all seaside places, has grown, and is growing yet, but
not with the frenzied growth of more accessible places. It has sands,
is seated in a charming bay, and is frequented chiefly by recurrent
visitors, who, happening here on some day-excursion from Bournemouth,
have been stricken with a love of its still unconventional air, after a
surfeit of that starchy town that sprawls unwieldy upon the Hampshire
coast. These be decent folk, uxorious perhaps, and with large families,
but unostentatious and loving quiet, and they come to Swanage time and
again. You can see them any forenoon on the sands, Ma and Pa and the
children, the nursemaid, and the Maiden Aunt. There always is a Maiden
Aunt, by some kindly disposition of Providence; and I hope, for the
sake of families in general, there always will be, for, truly, no more
beneficent institution exists.
For these people, Swanage is admirable. If it were extensively built
upon, they would go elsewhere, and quite right too. But, although
the local landowners are eager to spoil the place for the sake of
ground-rents, their huge notice-boards facing the sea, offering sites
for houses, seem useless enough, and I hope they will remain so, and
there’s an end of it.
XXII.
It is, I suppose, some five miles from Swanage to Corfe: in summer, a
hot, dusty, glaring walk, and featureless, too, until Corfe itself is
neared. And Corfe, on a hot summer’s day, is a particularly parched,
desiccated, thirsty place; shadeless, receiving and radiating heat
from its stony expanse until distant objects, commonly still and
stolid enough, dance erratically in the quivering air. It shocks the
normally-constituted eye to see ranges of hills, distant churches, and
big houses wagging frantically, while yet no symptoms of earthquake
have been manifested; yet these signs and portents are common enough at
Corfe, when the dog days rage unmitigated. A quiet village though, and
pleasing enough when once the traveller has quenched his thirst. The
streets converge toward a small market-place, and directly in front,
high above the church and the houses, tower the sturdy ruins of Corfe
Castle.
[Illustration: CORFE CASTLE.]
To all them that see, or would have, significance in the look of
a place or building, Corfe Castle should wear an aspect dour and
forbidding indeed, for this is a fortress of a history so particularly
bloodstained that few places can vie with it in its bad eminence. But
though the shattered ruins of its immense keep still lift up eyeless
windows to the sky, they do not seem to frown, as by all associations
they should surely do, if we are to believe the picturesque
convention of the guide-book writers. No, they compose excellently
and impressively, but I can’t say they lower or frown or do anything
significant of their career.
The history of Corfe goes back so far as A.D. 978, when the curtain
rises upon the tragedy of Edward the King and Martyr, stabbed to death
while receiving, on horseback, a stirrup-cup at the hands of his
step-mother, Elfrida, who thus sought to clear the way of her own son
to the throne of the West Saxons.
The present castle dates from some period between the Norman conquest
and the reign of Stephen, when it was the scene of an ineffectual siege
laid by him. Then it became a favourite residence with John, who within
these strong walls kept his regalia and many unhappy prisoners, many
of them starved to death in the dungeons. Here, too, was imprisoned
until the succeeding reign Elinor, the sister of Prince Arthur. Removed
afterwards to Bristol, she died there after forty years’ captivity.
Edward II. was confined here until his removal to Berkeley Castle.
The last events in the history of Corfe Castle were two sieges in 1643
and 1646. The latter was successful, and, by order of the Parliament,
the buildings were afterwards “slighted,” _i.e._, blown up by
gunpowder. But so sturdy and so immensely thick were these walls, that
although ruined indeed, they still stand, with gateways thrown out of
the perpendicular, yet intact. The views from the keep embrace the
low-lying heaths that stretch out toward Wareham, and the sullen salt
waters of that inland lake, Poole Harbour.
XXIII.
The Purbeck Hills make breathless walking on a hot day, and so it
chanced that when we reached the hamlet of East Lulworth we were hot
and footsore and scant of breath. Shall I confess that we were soulless
enough (or too tired) to step aside in search of Lulworth Cove, that
famous inlet of the sea? Yes, ’tis better so. Instead, we lay awhile
under the shade of trees in Lulworth Park, and viewed with some
disfavour the unpicturesque towers of Lulworth Castle.
At the only inn here we were turned empty away when we would have
had lunch; the good folk were too busy with what appeared to be a
rent-audit dinner. From the roadway and through the open windows we
could see long tables spread with all manner of eatables, and seated
there many farmers and yeoman-looking men, who, many of them, in the
pauses of their eating, rested their hands beside their plates with
knife and fork held upright between their fists.
[Illustration: “POLITICS AND AGRICULTURE.”]
We were very hungry, and when, on leaving Lulworth, we asked the way of
a stolid, big-built, farmer-like man, were none too interested in his
long talk of politics and agriculture. He told us of a route over the
downs by which we should pass Osmington, and we set out with all haste
to cover the eight miles between us and that village. The cliff scenery
here is grand and comprehensive, with great barrow-covered hills near
and far, and a long sweep of coast-line bounded by Portland Bill; but
this is a tiring and almost trackless walk in places, and lonely. All
the way to Osmington we passed but one meagre collection of cottages
with a roadside smithy, where the smith, leaving his work, came out and
gazed after us, possibly to refresh his eyes with the infrequent sight
of human beings.
[Illustration: “GAZED AFTER US.”]
We came into Osmington village at the twilight hour, famished and
deadly tired. At the “Plough” we would have tea. “Yes,” said the
hostess, “but we have neither milk nor butter.” We had a glass of ale
instead, and postponed the meal.
At Preston, one mile and a half farther, we partook of the
long-deferred refreshment at a quarter to nine, and afterwards walked
into Weymouth.
The Naval Manœuvres were in progress, and some night operations off
Portland were taking place, the roadways, sky, and sea lit up with the
brilliant flashings of the search lights.
At 10.45 we reached Weymouth, only to find the hotels filled. With some
trouble a bedroom was found for us, but our joy was qualified at being
introduced to a low-ceiled garret with a howling infant making night
hideous on the other side of a thin boarded partition.
XXIV.
[Illustration: “EXTREMELY AMUSING, I DO ASSURE YOU.”]
Weymouth is a town of red-bricked respectability, and about fourteen
thousand inhabitants. It lives on convicts, Portland stone, and the
Channel Islands, and lies upon the curving shores of a beautiful
bay. Even as George IV. is the patron king of Brighton, so was his
father the respected cause of Weymouth’s prosperity. There is a stumpy
statue of him upon the esplanade where Weymouth and Melcombe Regis
imperceptibly merge one into the other, and that statue, I take it, is
not so much an exemplar of a kingly presence, as a bronze apotheosis
of all that was dullest and most obstinate in constitutional monarchy
of this century and the last. This is a jubilee memorial, erected in
1809 by the “grateful inhabitants” to George III. It is not a beautiful
memorial; it is so unlovely that no photographs of it are on sale at
Weymouth, which proves without further ado the poverty of the design.
The king looks down the street with a fishy glance, and his gaze to-day
rests upon that other jubilee memorial, the Clock-tower, erected in
1887--useful, but scarcely a thing of beauty--a merely meretricious
iron and gilt affair, without even the quaint ugliness of the Georgian
effigy to recommend it.
Beside these claims to notice, Weymouth has nothing to advance. Its
harbour is merely commonplace, and its streets featureless.
We took train to Abbotsbury, and waited a longer time for it to
start than it would have taken us to walk the distance. However, we
passed the time pleasantly enough, reading the auctioneers’ posters
of sales--farm-stock and the like--and consulting our maps. Then we
had the advantage of sharing the platform with a gorgeous individual
who, like ourselves, awaited the train, but, unlike us, was “got up”
immensely, and was evidently incapable of forgetting the fact. He wore
an eyeglass, and the most wonderful breeches I have ever beheld.
I don’t mean, by particularising these things, to say that he wore
nothing else, but that these articles were the most salient of all
his apparel, although, without them, the remainder would have been
sufficiently striking. But there! words are not sufficient. I have
sketched him for your satisfaction, and for my own eternal delight.
The creature smiled at our rough and ready touring fit, and we
chuckled at the opportunity of perpetuating him in print: we found one
another extremely amusing, I do assure you.
It is a nine-mile journey by rail to Abbotsbury, on a branch line that
has its terminus here. The little river Wey lends its name to two of
the villages passed, Upwey and Broadwey, but the railway company is
superior to derivatives, and spells the latter Broadway on all its
time-tables and station furniture.
There were few passengers for Abbotsbury, and none but ourselves were
visitors. At our hotel our hearts sank when we saw, framed and glazed,
in the passage, a year-old telegram from the Duke of Edinburgh to the
proprietor, asking him to get lunch and beds for a party. It was not
only the snobbery of it, but the thought that all subsequent visitors
would have to pay for that Royal visit (ourselves included) that made
us quail. And, true enough, a massive bill awaited our departure the
next morning.
XXV.
Abbotsbury is a place of very great interest. It lies within half a
mile of the sea, near by the Fleet Water and the Chesil Beach, and
was at one time the site (as its name implies) of a very extensive
and powerful abbey. The Dissolution of the Monasteries, and the
appropriation of their funds, put an end to this religious house, among
others, and very few remains of it are to be seen to-day. The Abbey
Farm, a delightful old house, is built of its stones, and portions
of the Gatehouse remain, with vestiges of the fish-ponds, here as
elsewhere a great feature of the monastic settlement. All else is
gone, even the great mansion built by Sir Giles Strangways upon the
abbey lands that had been granted to him, and with the stones of its
ruinated buildings, has disappeared. But the great tithe-barn of the
monks still remains--a building of noble proportions, some 300 feet in
length, built with sturdy buttresses and neatly-joined ashlar, with
a great porch and a roof held up by massive timbers, every detail
fashioned with exquisite taste, and over all a decided ecclesiastical
feeling. Few modern churches are built so substantially, and fewer so
tastefully, as Abbotsbury tithe-barn. Half of its length is roofless;
the moiety of it suffices for the secular farmer who uses it to-day for
the same purposes for which it was built many centuries ago: if it was
not too large when built, how immense the products of these tithes must
have been!
The parish church still exhibits some good architectural details,
particularly on the exterior of the north aisle, which shows some
excellent Perpendicular windows, surmounted by a string-course and
battlements. Pinnacles are corbelled out at intervals from the
string-course, and have a very pleasing effect.
Crowning the seaward hill of Saint Catherine, that rises in terraced
slopes populous with rabbits, is an ancient chapel, small but immensely
strong, built to withstand the winds that blow with tremendous
violence from the sea. It commands wide-spreading views, to Portland
on the one hand, to Lyme Regis and the Cliffs of Beer on the other,
and inland stretch the rolling hills and wide downs of this impressive
county.
How to seize the characteristics of Dorsetshire when you have fared
from end to end of the county only along the bold and cliff-girt
scenery of its seaward side, from Purbeck Hills, by the Abbotsbury
uplands, to the impressive heights of Golden-cap and Stonebarrow? How
to pluck out the heart of its mystery and weird beauty when its heaths
and inland vales are matters of reading only? Yet it should seem that
Dorset is a Hampshire purged of mere pensiveness, more varied, more
dramatic than its eastern neighbour, with a drama that rises to moving
tragedies--fit scenes for that blood-drowned rebellion that began
upon the beach at Lyme, and so surged through pastoral Somerset to be
finally quelled by Monmouth’s capture in the vicinity of Wimborne.
But a mile or so apart from those trim modern excrescences of the
sea-board, the “watering-places,” risen and rising, the stolid county
folk (Teutons chiefly) lead lives little touched with modernism in
the fat valleys folded between the swelling shoulders of camp-crowned
hills, whereon the Romans and the Britons, the Celt, the Saxon, and the
Dane, have waged wars of extermination. Here, in that dim Wessex, were
fought many battles in hand-to-hand fashion, and the sublimated memory
of them, blurred and fantastic, lingers yet in traditions, even in
turns of speech and place-names. The Dorset folk have a name for the
rich red bloom of the wallflower that seems significant. They call them
“bloody warriors.”
Before we left Abbotsbury we visited the Swannery, where many hundreds
of swans, the property of the Earl of Ilchester, are kept. There has
been a swannery here for over eight hundred years, and, in addition, a
decoy for wild duck.
It is a fine breezy walk, but rough and tiring, from here to Burton
Bradstock, along the coast--eight miles of a ribbon-like path, that
winds along the landward side of the Chesil Beach. By the time we
reached that village we had had more than enough of it, and crossed
the little river Bredy into the highroad. At the end of another mile
and a half that road runs steeply down into West Bay, the port and
harbour of Bridport, a desolate place of infinite sand, where the sea
comes banging in furiously upon the wooden jetties at the harbour
mouth. Up the marshy valley can just be seen the roof-tops of Bridport,
and at the back of them hills, with hills again to right and left.
Indeed, this is a stretch of country calculated to make sad within
him the heart of the cyclist, for hills abound, and however fair the
country-side may be to an unprejudiced observer, ’tis little short
of a wonder when a land of hills and dales is other than a howling
wilderness to the perspiring wheelman, bent over his handles in an
agony of pedalling. Such an one we met fighting against the inevitable
when last we journeyed this way. The inevitable, it should be said in
this connection, resolved itself into a dismount, and a moist and
gasping halt by the dusty hedgerow. Well, we left the poor soul, and
encumbered only with our knapsacks, breasted the steep down that forms
a short cut to Chideock. Here cycles may not go by any manner of means.
The village of Chideock lay in a valley at some distance, a village of
the kind that lines the highroad, with one long street, rising from the
hollow, half-way to the brow of the succeeding hill. All around lay the
huge hills of this hilly land, with Golden Cap, truncated, like another
Table Mountain, seaward.
XXVI.
Chideock was named from a once powerful family that bore this singular
name, but now long since extinct. They had their castle here, of which
no sign now remains, saving only in the name of the Chideock Castle
Inn, where we stayed the night. It was a night close and intolerably
warm, and I could not sleep. All through the night and the earliest
morning hours the place within and the countryside without were
quiet to a degree. Only once was the stillness of the country road
broken--toward the stroke of one--by the old clock on the stairway.
Then some one who rode horseback went past at a trot, and the clatter
of hoofs rang out clearly in the stillness of the air for some minutes.
I lay and wondered whom he could be who was called abroad at this
hour, and so, weaving little romances around that unconscious rider,
presently fell asleep.
In these remote country places every footfall in the night seems to
carry an especial significance, and each infrequent sound creates a
little eddy of thought in the receptive mind. I accompanied that rider
in my dreams, which wove an extraordinary tangle of fact and fancy
together. The horse became winged Pegasus, the rider an editor, to
whose skirts I was clinging in an agony of desperation, and we were
going like the wind. We rose above such sordid things as earthly roads,
and soared into the empyrean. Presently we were talking to a lady of
classic features and manner of dress. The editor, in an aside to me,
said her name was Clio, and he had called to see her with reference
to a weekly fashion column which she had promised to contribute to
the ----. I had never respected women journalists so much as now. The
editor concluded his interview and mounted his horse. “Jump up,” said
he, and, so saying, caught me by the arm.
“No hurry,” said I. “Your horse is a good one to go.”
“What the deuce are you talking about?” said he.
I rubbed my eyes and stared at him, and, lo! it was the Wreck,
half-dressed and smoking a cigarette, who had waked me.
“I’ve been awake all night,” he said; “it has been too warm for
sleeping. It’s five o’clock now, and a lovely morning. Better put on
your things, and we’ll go out for an early morning walk.”
We dressed and let ourselves quietly out of the house.
Next the inn was the church, which was locked of course at this early
hour. In the churchyard was a thing that spoke of Chideock Castle, the
tomb of Thomas Daniell, who, as a brass plate informed us, was “Steward
of the Manor and Lordship of Chideock, who, loyal to his king, and
true to his master, gallantly defended the Castle of Chideock.” The
inscription ends with the quotation from Holy Writ--
“Well done, thou good and faithful servant:
Enter thou into the joy of thy lord,”
which reads somewhat humorously, for surely never before has any one so
finely confused secular loyalty with religious constancy, and never was
blasphemy so unconscious as this.
XXVII.
We returned later to breakfast, and astonished the good folk of the
Chideock Castle, who had not heard our early morning exit, and thought
us still asleep.
It was, by reason of this early rising, yet cool and pleasant when we
had left Chideock, and come by way of Morecombelake into Charmouth.
Charmouth, on this summer’s day, was wonderfully pleasant--everything,
sea and shore and sky, pervaded by a golden haze. But what this
settlement-like place must be like on a wet day of incessant drizzle,
is an image dreadful to contemplate.