[Picture: Weymouth: St. Mary Street and statue of George III.]
BY CHARLES G. HARPER AUTHOR OF “THE INGOLDSBY COUNTRY,” ETC.
“Here shepherds pipe their rustic song, Their flocks and rural nymphs among.”
_Dorsetshire_, _the centre of the_ “_Hardy Country_,” _the home of the Wessex Novels_, _is a land literally flowing with milk and honey_: _a land of great dairies_, _of flowers and bees_, _of rural industries_, _where rustic ways and speech and habits of thought live long_, _and the kindlier virtues are not forgotten in such stress of life as prevails in towns_: _a land desirable for its own sweet self_, _where you may see the beehives in cottage gardens and therefrom deduce that honey of which I have spoken_, _and where that flow of milk is no figure of speech_. _You may indeed hear the swish of it in the milking pails at almost every turn of every lane_.
_Thatch survives in every village_, _as nowhere else_, _and here quaint towns maintain their quaintness at all odds_, _while elsewhere foolish folk seek to be—as they phrase it_—“_up to date_.” _It is good_, _you think_, _who explore these parts_, _to be out of date and reckless of all the tiresome worries of modernity_.
_Spring is good in Dorset_, _summer better_, _autumn—when the kindly fruits of the earth are ingathered and __the smell of pomace is sweet in the mellow air—best_. _Winter_? _Well_, _frankly_, _I don’t know_.
_To all these natural advantages has been added in our generation the romantic interest of Mr. Thomas Hardy’s novels of rural life and character_, _in which real places are introduced with a lavish hand_. _The identity of those places is easily resolved_; _and_, _that feat performed_, _there is that compelling force in his genius which inevitably_, _sooner or later_, _magnetically draws those who have read_, _to see for themselves what manner of places and what folk they must be in real life_, _from whose characteristics such poignant tragedy_, _such suave and admirable comedy_, _have been evolved_. _I have many a time explored Egdon_, _and observed the justness of the novelist’s description of that sullen waste_: _have traversed Blackmoor Vale_, _where_ “_the fields are never brown and the springs never dry_,” _but where the roads—it is a cyclist’s criticism—are always shockingly bad_: _in fine_, _have visited every literary landmark of the Wessex Novels_. _If I have not found the rustics so sprack-witted as they are in_ THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE _and other stories—why_, _I never expected so to find them_, _for I did not imagine the novelist to be a reporter_. _But—this is in testimony to the essential likeness to life of his women—I know_ “_Bathsheba_”; _only she is not a farmer_, _nor in_ “_Do’set_,” _and I have met_ “_Viviette_” _and_ “_Fancy_.” _They were called by other names_, _’tis true_; _but they were_, _and are_, _those distracting characters come to life_.