The Distracted Preacher by Thomas Hardy

found in Puddletown, the Weatherbury of “ Far from the Madding Crowd,” but at a spot some two miles distant from that place; and Great Hintock House, Mrs. Charmond’s residence, is not in the country of “The Woodlanders,” but in quite another part of the county. Again, some places are of the nature of composite pictures, such as the Tower in “Two on a Tower,” which has features borrowed, as Mr. Hardy himself has pointed out in the introduction to the last edition of that novel, from two of the several obelisks and towers which are to be found in the county of Dorset. But in every case—or in almost every case—the houses described are real edifices, whether they occupy the sites allotted to them in the novels or not, and are drawn for us, as a general rule, with that architectural accuracy which Mr. Hardy’s early studies in that profession have enabled him to impart to them. With regard to natural scenery the case is different. Here the descriptions paint for us the scenes as they are, and as we should wish to describe them, when we see them, were we endowed with the pen of a master. Instances of this may be found in the pictures of the Vale of Blackmore, the valley of the Frome as seen by Tess on her way to Talbothays, and the various accounts of Egdon Heath.
    In certain cases Mr. Hardy has given an easy clue to the place which he had in his mind when writing, by transferring the name of the locality to his hero or some other character in the book. Thus Fawley, Jude’s surname, is the real name of the village which figures in the book as Marygreen; Melbury, the timber-merchant of “The Woodlanders,” takes his name from the real appellation of one of the Hintocks; and Phillotson’s friend and fellow-schoolmaster, Gillingham, is called after the place in which he taught, the Leddenton of the tale.
    True to his devotion to Wessex, the names of many, perhaps of most, of Mr. Hardy’s characters—to diverge for a moment into a bypath—are taken from the names of villages in the district, or will be found on tombstones, over shop-doors, or in pedigrees belonging to the same region. Thus the Chickerells are villages near Weymouth; the name of Tullidge, that hero who “fout at Valencien,” and showed his ruined arm to Maidy Anne in “The Trumpet-Major,” is on a tombstone at Abbotsbury; Derriman presides over a shop at Cerne Abbas; and Keyte finds a place in the pedigree of those descended from the old Jerseyman, Thomas Hardy, of whose stock are the novelist and that other celebrated Thomas Hardy, who sailed the ship which carried Nelson to death and glory at Trafalgar.
    The visitor to Dorsetshire, who knows his Wessex novels, will constantly be struck with the small touches betraying the intimate knowledge which its novelist possesses of his country. Many of these will be alluded to in subsequent pages, and one only need here be mentioned as an example. It will be remembered that Tess, on her journey to Marlott, after her betrayal by Stoke-D’Urberville, met with a man whose simple method of evangelization was to paint texts, mostly of a denunciatory character, on the top bars of gates and stiles and other such places. Many such inscriptions may be found in the country around Dorchester, though the present writer, with a fair knowledge of rural England, has never come across them elsewhere. Thus, on a stile near Stinsford, as Mr. New shows in his picture, is inscribed, “Speak Evil of No Man;” and on a gate near Maiden Newton—one of several inscriptions in that part of the world—is, “Prepare to Meet Thy God.”

Lulworth Cove
Illustration from Hardy Country Water-Colours by Walter Tyndale.

Budmouth to Lulstead
    Selection from The Wessex of Thomas Hardy by
B.C.A. Windle & E.H. New.
    In this excursion the road leads east instead of west, and crossing that gentle slope which is called Greenhill, takes us past the