7-2-09

Warning: If you are not a fan of Thomas Hardy, travel blogs, or boring stuff you might not want to continue reading. I'm just letting those of you who are only reading this to be nice to me off the hook. At most, skim it and see if you can stay awake. I dare you.

The first stop of the day was the cobb wall at Lyme Regis which is completely unrelated to Thomas Hardy but something Brian thought it worthwhile to see anyway. As you can see in the pictures (hopefully I have them posted), the cobb wall is a huge stone wall built along the coast as protection from the rough and choppy waves. Jane Austin fans would recognize it from Persuasion(the book and the movie) as the place where one of the girls (sorry, can't remember the name) playfully jumps down off the steps expecting one of the men to catch her but ends up falling and hurting herself. It's also the wall where the main character, played by Meryl Streep, walked in the French Lieutenant's Wife.

We then proceeded on to Hardy country, Dorset County, or if you have read Hardy you will know it as Wessex. Despite changed names, Hardy's descriptions of landscape, buildings, towns, and villages are so detailed and accurate that they can be identified as real places. We went around to several churches in Bere Regis and Puddletown that Hardy would have known well in his youth.

Brian pointed out several things that were helpful in understanding some of the influences on Hardy's work. One such feature was the presence (or absence) of the choir loft at the back of the church. Sometime in the 17th century organs were banned in the Anglican church along with other ornamental or musical worship customs that would denote any Catholic influence. In the absence of the organ, other instruments were made, often rather crudely, and played by parishioners who organized themselves into makeshift orchestras referred to as choirs. One of the shifts in local custom and social fabric that Hardy so beautifully illustrates in Under the Greenwood Tree is what happens when the organ comes back into favor and how a much loved tradition of musical involvement was phased out of existence. Trained organists were often brought in from outside the parish effectively marginalizing many members of the parish who had found their niche in the choir.

I especially like the choir loft in Puddletown. The stairs leading up to it looked ancient, steep, and narrow and with each step the delicious smell of a really old place got stronger and stronger. It offered the best view of the interior of the church but even better was the distinct sense of times and memories long past. Have you ever been somewhere that is so old you can feel it? Like all of these significant and insignificant events that have happened in this same space have each contributed something to the aura of the place. I would have liked to have spent all morning looking in corners and behind curtains for clues or insights into any of the long lost stories that had no doubt played out here but alas, this was only the third stop of the day and there were many more places to see.

Just a quick note for any Hardy readers (is anyone there?), this church at Puddletown played a very central role in Far From the Madding Crowd. Called Weatherbury in the novel, it is where Seargent Troy attends Fannie May's grave in the churchyard, as well as numerous other references. The church at Bere Regis is where it is thought Hardy got the name D'Urberville and borrowed the story of an extinct noble family. The church houses the tombs of the Turbaville family dating back to the 1500's. Later in the day, Brian would point out several other names that Hardy had borrowed and used for characters in his novels from church carvings, tomb plates, and/or stain glass windows. Brian surmises that he must have noticed these while his attentions were wandering during the services.

Next we went to Higher Bockhampton to see the family cottage where Hardy was born and lived well into adulthood. On the drive and walk up to it, Brian pointed out that the surrounding hilly area was the basis for Egdon Heath in Return of the Native. Not apparent because Egdon Heath, which Hardy described in such detail as being covered with nothing but furze, are no longer there today. Instead the area has grown up into forest and woods but one can still see the top of Rainbarrows Hill where the fires were burning in the opening scene of the story.

Hardy's cottage was one of the highlights of the day for me. It was sparsely decorated with pieces very much like the ones that would have furnished it in Hardy's day. Although I had been seeing thatch roofed houses all day in the little villages we were driving through, it was very neat to walk through the inside of one and see what it would have been like in the 1800's. Brian reminded me that we would need to read Domicilium, the earliest known of Hardy's poems, that describes the cottage where his family had lived since 1801.

We then went to Stinsford Church (known as Mellstock in Hardy's novels). This is where his heart is buried (his ashes are in Westminster Abbey) along with his first wife, Emma Livinia Gifford. From here we walked one of Hardy's favorite routes along a tributary of the Frome river. Brian pointed out where he thinks the scene from Tess, when Angel Claire carries the girls across the river on their way to church, happened. Also, Talbothays, the dairy farm where Tess works as a milk maid and is happy (but for a brief time) is also in the vicinity although we weren't able to go there as it is privately owned. As we were leaving Stinsford Church on the trail, Brian said that he would leave me to finish the walk on my own so he could go back and get the car and meet me on the other side of the woods--unless I annoyed him too much, and then he wouldn't come back for me at all. Luckily he did.

Thus far I have only touched on the first half of the day and will have to continue the rest in my next entry.