The Heart of Wessex (Illustrations)

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DORCHESTER AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD

As all the world is beginning to realize, that portion of the country immortalized by Thomas Hardy, in his great romances of rural life, lies in one of the most delectable regions of south-west England; and although, for the purpose of giving variety to his scenic backgrounds, Mr. Hardy has occasionally gone far beyond the narrow boundaries of his home county, yet for general purposes his Wessex is synonymous with the county of Dorset. Historically considered the Wessex of the novels is but partially conterminous with that wherein, after centuries of bloodshed, our Saxon ancestors established their Octarchy, and the novelist has explained his reasons for the adoption of the name "Wessex", which did not appear in any of the novels until the publication, in 1874, of Far from the Madding Crowd. "The series of novels I projected," he writes, "being mainly of the kind called local, they seemed to require a territorial definition of some sort to lend unity to their scene. Finding that the area of a single county did not afford a canvas large enough for the purpose, and that there were objections to an invented name, I disinterred the old one. The press and the public were kind enough to welcome the fanciful plan, and willingly joined me in the anachronism of imagining a Wessex population living under Queen Victoria, a modern Wessex of railways," &c.

As Professor Windle says: "Whilst peopling these scenes with the creatures of his imagination, Mr. Hardy has achieved a feat which he was probably far from contemplating when he first commenced his series of novels. For incidentally he has resuscitated, one may even say re-created, the old half-forgotten kingdom of Wessex."

Although there is scarcely any portion of the county that does not figure in one or other of Mr. Hardy's novels or poems, yet by far the greater number of scenes lie in the portion called South Dorset, around and below an imaginary line drawn from a little to the west of Dorchester to Poole Harbour, and it is mainly with this portion of the Hardy country that it is proposed to deal in this volume.

Like all the true beauty spots of England, increasing familiarity with these south-country landscapes deepens their ineffaceable impression as it multiplies their alluring charms; and, small as is the geographical extent of this strip of rural England, it yet fills our thoughts as it delights our eyes; and it is large enough to attract us by a thousand threads of history and romance, by a hundred beauties of rolling downs and grassy vales, and of steep chalk cliffs where the blue waters of the Channel break with a splutter of spray.

For miles one can wander amid such scenes in this fair Wessex land, where the roses of dawn fade into the infinite azure of a cloudless sky, and the cool salt breath of the sea-borne air is an elixir of life. Moreover, these soft sea breezes, that temper the dazzling heat of the summer sun, waft in their train an unfading wreath of memories of that antique civilization which existed long before the prows of the Roman galleys clove the ethereal mists that fringe the Dorsetian seas.

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