Part 4

Five miles from Corfe Castle is Swanage, a town that is rapidly coming to the front as a fashionable watering-place. During the summer an excellent steamboat service connects it with Bournemouth and Weymouth, from both of which it is also easily reached by rail. The place has changed vastly since it served as a background for Ethelberta's life history, the place where she retired to marry Lord Mountclere, with Sol and the bridegroom's brother vainly endeavouring to reach "Knollsea" in time to stop the ceremony. Mr. Hardy writes: "Knollsea was a seaside village, lying snug within two headlands as between a finger and thumb. Everybody in the parish who was not a boatman was a quarrier, unless he were the gentleman who owned half the property and had been a quarryman, or the other gentleman who owned the other half, and had been to sea."

"The row of rotten piles" to which the steamer was moored in the days when _The Hand of Ethelberta_ was penned, have long since been supplemented by a substantial pier, while in place of the boatmen and quarriers the inhabitants to-day seem to depend for a living on attending to the needs of the many tourists attracted to Swanage by its splendid climate and beautiful surroundings.

A fine walk over Ballard Down not only commands some exceptional and sweeping views of the Dorset and Hampshire coast, but leads to Studland, a charming village with an ancient Norman church and a glorious little bay of golden sand, that is edged by the wide expanse of unenclosed moorland known as Studland Heath. The magnificent panorama from the high land above Studland embraces nearly the whole of the eastern half of Dorset, the far-famed Isle of Purbeck, and as we turn from the amphitheatre of rolling downs the eye ranges to the blue sea breaking at the base of the chalk cliffs of the Isle of Wight, or foaming round the near promontory of Peveril Point.

Away in a north-easterly direction the low-lying lands that edge the creeks and mudflats of Poole Harbour spread out like a map, and contrast their warm greens with the silvery tones of the great harbour. A brief description of Poole is given in one of the short stories of _Life's Little Ironies_, where it figures beneath the thin disguise of "Havenpool".

During the smuggling days Poole, together with the majority of these south-country ports, enjoyed a very unenviable reputation, and was the home of the celebrated Harry Paye, or "Arripay" as the Spaniards who so dreaded him rendered the name, who is said to have brought into Poole Harbour, on one occasion, more than one hundred prizes from the ports of Brittany, and "to have scoured the channel of Flanders so powerfully that no ship could pass that way without being taken".

Poole has retained quite a number of its ancient domestic buildings, including the problematical fifteenth-century structure known as the "Town Cellars"; but nothing is known with regard to the purposes for which it was originally erected. Some antiquaries believe it to have been connected with the Guild of St. George, others hold that it was used as a manorial storehouse, wherein were deposited the goods left by the lord of the manor. Michael Drayton in his _Polyolbion_ depicts the rivers Frome and Puddle as entertaining each other, "oft praising lovely Poole, their best beloved bay"; and in truth Poole Harbour is charming at any state of the tide. It has been the haunt of the painter since the days when Turner found such uncommon sources of inspiration along the shores of its wooded creeks, and counterfeit presentments of this Dorset lakeland hang on the walls of many a European picture gallery. Exclusive of all islands the area of this vast sea-lake is ten thousand acres, while it has been calculated that thirty-six million tons of water flow into and out of the narrow entrance at every spring tide.

The sheet of water is studded with wooded islands that add not a little to its manifold charms. The most considerable of these islands are Branksea or Brownsea, Fursey, Long, Round, and Green Islands.

For the pedestrian there is a delightful walk along the edge of the water to Haven Point with its Marconi installation, thence by way of cliff and chine to Bournemouth; but the beauties of this great salt lake are only fully revealed to those who woo them from the water.

By means of a motor launch, with a dinghy in tow for landing purposes, a thorough exploration can be made of such little-known spots as Pergins' Island, with its clumps of fir trees, Hole's and Lychett Bays.

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.

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

_At the Villafield Press, Glasgow, Scotland_

Transcriber's Note:

Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.

Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as printed.

Words printed in italics are marked with underlines: _italics_.

The cover of this ebook was created by the transcriber and is hereby placed in the public domain.