Part 6

Presently we set out again and came through Wootton to Christchurch, that fine old town lying between the rivers Stour and Avon, with a great priory church, that gives the place its accepted name, superseding the old-time designation of Twyneham. Here is a Norman house, and close by is the site of the castle, now converted into a public pleasure-ground, where a notice-board warns visitors that the penalty for using bad language is not less than forty shillings.

There is an old altar-tomb in the churchyard that has long been a mystery, and in all probability will ever remain one. No one knows what its strange inscription means, although its strangeness invites research, nor who the “ten” were who are buried here, nor who were the “men of strife” that twice buried them: a most enthralling mystery; who will rede the riddle of this cryptic inscription:--

WE WERE NOT SLAYNE BVT RAYSD, RAYSD NOT TO LIFE BUT TO BE BVRIED TWICE BY MEN OF STRIFE WHAT REST COVLD ^{TH} LIVING HAVE WHEN DEAD HAD NONE AGREE AMONGST YOV HEERE WE TEN ARE ONE

HEN: ROGERS DIED APRILL 17, 1641

I · R ·

Here is another tombstone: one, this time, that arouses, not curiosity, but an unseemly mirth, by reason of its curious illiteracy. It dates from 1720.

“Here Lieth in hope of A Joyful Resurrecti on the Body of LUCY y^e Daughter of Richard and Lucy baset Who departed this Life February y^e 16^{th} day Heark, heark I hears A voi^{ce} The Lord made sweet bab es for his one choyce and when his will and pleasur^E is there Bodys he turns to Dust there Souls to Rain with Christ one High.”

By way of Southborough-on-Sea, that struggling maze of stuccoed, melancholy houses, we left Christchurch, and came upon the parched and desolate undulations of that sandy waste, Pokesdown, like nothing so much as a bankrupt outpost of civilisation in the back blocks of Australia.

We had asked a fat and florid countryman, who surely was out of place here, how far it was to Bournemouth.

“We calls it a matter of fower mile,” he said. Those reputed four miles proved to be nearer six than four; better measure than the “reputed” pints or quarts of commerce.

XVIII.

It was late in the hot afternoon, when we came into Bournemouth, through what seemed to us miles of suburban roads and endless rows of stucco villas. This is what Mr. Stevenson calls “the uncharted wilderness of Bournemouth,” and, indeed, we found the phrase happy and the place not at all to our liking. From what we saw of the famed pine-woods we were not impressed with them; gaunt battalions of tall trees, bare as scaffold-poles and as straight, with never a branch nor sign of foliage within a matter of forty feet from the ground, and that ground covered with a frowzy matting of husky, colourless fir-spines--a Bournemouth pine-wood is a depressing place.

If Bournemouth had been invented when the era of the Interesting Invalid was yet with us, I can conceive how grand a site it would have been for the novelist’s plots (plots, that is to say, in a technical sense, for under no circumstances could one imagine robustious plottings and deeds of derring-do at Bournemouth). Building-plots are Bournemouth’s nearest approach to the romantic. Languorous romances of the fading-away-in-the-twilight order would have been written with an anæmic heroine effectively displayed against a striking background of whispering fir-trees, and--but you all know that sort of thing!

But this was not to be. Long before Bournemouth had sprung into importance, the Interesting Invalid had grown unfashionable, and there reigned in her stead the robust young woman of fine Du Maurieresque physique, and energetic, not to say athletic and slangy habits. Bournemouth, truly, is thronged with invalids, but not chiefly with the interesting variety: that sort went out with the crinoline. Here the Bath Chair is the most familiar object of the sea-shore, and the mild and offensively inoffensive chair-man has attained in his numbers the dignity of a class.

But not only invalids hie them to the neighbourhood of these frowzy firs, these yellow sands. Bournemouth, one is tempted to say, is the watering-place _par excellence_ of the curate. There is a certain respectable air of five-o’clock tea and a savour of muffins about the place, that traditionally accompany the unbeneficed. Bournemouth abominates the tripper whose pockets ring with plebeian silver, whose trips are calculated in hours, and so with the recurrence of statutory holidays, Bournemouth shivers at the sounds of vulgar revelry heard by the sounding sea. Truth to tell, however, the jolly Bank-holiday crew are never too prominent here: lordly expresses are the salient feature of the railway service and hotels of an appalling magnificence affright the shallow pursed. Otherwhere, sandy foreshores are filled, thronged, with trippers, cheap and checked with checks of Tweed gone mad; with photographic ninepenny-touchers, gay again in that the automatic cloud has passed away from their horizon; with longshoremen, gruff of voice and broad in the beam, redolent of spirits, who confide to your unwilling ear the secret of the day being “fine for a sail, sir;” with hateful brats intent on constructing masked pitfalls for the stout and elderly of either gender; with children’s missionising preachers with their excruciating harmoniums; raucous-voiced burnt-corkists, tract-distributors and hurdy-gurds. Here, to the contrary, are few of these pests. Certainly there be occasionally, as at prim and proper Hastings, the children’s services, that give an air of cheap and superficial piety to the scene; and liliputian pails and spades are continually at work on the sands; but moneyed holiday-makers, either leisured or (in two senses) pursy business men of the Saturday to Monday variety are among the chief of Bournemouth’s clientèle. I met Wellesley Welles the other day in, let me see where was it? Oh, yes, Capel Court. He was going to flee for a space the gilded baseness of the Stock Exchange for a three weeks’ trip to Homburg, and to that end had accumulated a prodigious heap of red-covered encyclopædias of travel, and spouted guide-bookese until the brain whirled again with the sound and volume of it. Yet Bournemouth claimed him as its own for many week-ends. Indeed, Saturday to Monday Bournemouth is peculiarly knowing in contangos and options, and has a keen eye on the money article in its morning paper.

XIX.

We stayed a day at Bournemouth, to catch anew the flavour of the place. On the morning after our arrival we came down early to breakfast.

There was an American in the coffee-room. He was staying at the hotel, it seemed, with his wife and daughter. He did not, strange to say, wear striped trousers strapped over his boots, nor a star-spangled waistcoat, as in the comic papers, nor the supposedly-characteristic Yankee goatee. No, he had none of these things; he resembled that American of the caricatures no more than the Englishman resembles the John Bull of the leathern breeches and the top-boots, and the low-crowned beaver hat. He didn’t even chew nor spit on the walls (we must revise those caricatures). The only American traits about him were his sallow complexion, his restlessness, and his high cheek-bones. That is to say, when he was silent. When he spoke there was no excuse for mistaking his nationality.

He eyed us for some time with an ill-suppressed curiosity, which at length grew too acute for silence.

“Gentlemen,” said he, “I see your names in the visitors’ book of this hotel. You come from London?”

I said we did.

“Say, you’re not travelling on business, I guess?”

The Wreck replied that we were touring for pleasure, and that we walked. This was an indiscreet admission, I could see at once, for this free-born citizen of those States evidently, by his manner, did not quite appreciate walking for walking’s sake. It was evidently, to his view, the mark of the “mean white.” But his only comment was, “Wall, I’ll swear.”

For all this fall in his esteem, though, his curiosity was still rampant, and he was as eager to obtain personal details as though he had been an interviewer (which indeed he was not, for he informed us that he had made “his dollars” in some grain-elevating business or another in “Chicawgo,” and had come over to see this country).

“Well,” I said, in answer to his inquiries, “my friend here is nothing in particular, and I’m a journalist.”

“You don’t say!” he exclaimed. “What paper?”

“The ---- and ----,” I replied; “but, indeed, any print that will use my stuff and pay at decent rates.”

“Wall, now! You’re like the flies, bumming around the sweetest lump of molasses, eh?”

I admitted that the case was somewhat similar, although I didn’t like the analogy.

“Ah!” exclaimed our American (whose name, by the way, was Hiram D. Cheasey, or something else equally humorous), “you ain’t got no paper over here to compare with the best New York papers: one of ’em ’specially.”

“Which one may that be?” I inquired of the stranger, who by now was beginning to exhibit symptoms of spread-eagleism.

“Sir,” he replied, “it is the organ through which America speaks to the hull civilized world.”

I suspect I must have been tempted of the devil, for I inquired, with apparent innocency--

“You mean the nasal organ, I presume?”

It was an unfortunate inquiry, for on account of it I never learned the name of the New York print which had so world-wide a voice: I wonder what is the title of that sheet, and what is its scale of remuneration?

XX.

It was evening ere we had taken our fill of Bournemouth’s joys and departed from those crowded sands to walk by the sea-shore to North Haven, where the entrance to Poole Harbour bars further progress. Bournemouth’s lights began to glitter in the gloaming, and made this lonely edge of land more cheerless by comparison.

An extortionate boatman (as we subsequently learned) rowed us in 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.