Thomas Hardy's Dorset. R. Thurston Hopkins

Birthplace of Thomas Hardy	Frontispiece
	FACING PAGE
Stocks at Tollard Royal	34
The Green Dragon at Barford St. Martin	38
The Giant, Cerne Abbas	92
Bingham's Melcombe	100
Hurdle-making at Bere Regis	126
Woolbridge House	136
Corfe Castle, 1865	160
The Famous Tillywhim Caves, 1860	170
Corfe Castle, 1860	176
The Lonely Singer	194
The River Buddle, Lyme Regis	202
The Master Smith of Lyme Regis	218
Drake Memorial at Musbury	222

THOMAS HARDY'S

DORSET

CHAPTER I DORSET FOLK AND DORSET WAYS

Table of Contents

So to the land our hearts we give

Till the sure magic strike,

And Memory, Use, and Love make live

Us and our fields alike—

That deeper than our speech and thought

Beyond our reason's sway,

Clay of the pit whence we were wrought

Yearns to its fellow-clay.

Rudyard Kipling.

To the traveller who takes an interest in the place he visits, Dorset will prove one of the most highly attractive counties in the kingdom. To the book-lover it is a land of grand adventure, for here is the centre of the Hardy Country, the home of the Wessex Novels. It is in Dorset that ancient superstitions and curious old customs yet linger, and strange beliefs from ages long ago still survive. It is good to find that the kindly hospitality, the shrewd wisdom and dry wit, for which the peasantry in Thomas Hardy's novels are famous, have not been weakened by foolish folk who seek to be "up to date." Old drinks and dishes that represent those of our forefathers, and the mellow sound of the speech that was so dear to Raleigh and Drake, are things that are now giving way to the new order of life, alas! but they are dying hard, as behoves things which are immemorial and sacramental. The rustics are perhaps not quite so witty as they are in Hardy's The Return of the Native and other novels, but they possess the robust forms and simple manners of a fine old agricultural people, while they show their spirit by the proverb, "I will not want when I have, nor, by Gor, when I ha'n't, too!"

Heavy of gait, stolid of mien, and of indomitable courage, the true Wessex man is a staunch friend and a very mild enemy. He is a genial fellow and, like Danton, seems to find no use for hate. He knows that all things done in hate have to be done over again. Imperturbable to the last ditch, he is rarely shaken into any exclamation of surprise or wrath. When he is, "Dang-my-ole-wig!" "Dallee!" with a strong accent on the "ee," or "Aw! dallybuttons!" are the kind of mild swear-words one hears. But when he gets into the towns he forgets these strange phrases and his dialect becomes less broad.

Heavy and stolid the Dorset rustic may be,

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