This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler

THE
HARDY COUNTRY

LITERARY LANDMARKS OF
THE      WESSEX    NOVELS

BY
CHARLES G. HARPER
AUTHOR OF “THE INGOLDSBYCOUNTRY,” ETC.

“Here shepherds pipe their rustic song,
Their flocks and rural nymphs among.”

ILLUSTRATED BY THEAUTHOR

LONDON
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK

1904

p.vPREFACE

Dorsetshire, the centre of the “HardyCountry,” the home of the Wessex Novels, is aland literally flowing with milk and honey: a land ofgreat dairies, of flowers and bees, of ruralindustries, where rustic ways and speech and habits ofthought live long, and the kindlier virtues are notforgotten in such stress of life as prevails in towns: aland desirable for its own sweet self, where you may seethe beehives in cottage gardens and therefrom deduce that honeyof which I have spoken, and where that flow of milk is nofigure of speech.  You may indeed hear the swish ofit in the milking pails at almost every turn of everylane.

Thatch survives in every village, as nowhereelse, and here quaint towns maintain their quaintness atall odds, while elsewhere foolish folk seek to be—asthey phrase it—“up to date.” It is good, you think, who explore theseparts, to be out of date and reckless of all the tiresomeworries of modernity.

Spring is good in Dorset, summer better,autumn—when the kindly fruits of the earth areingathered and p.vithe smell of pomace is sweet in the mellowair—best.  Winter?  Well,frankly, I don’t know.

To all these natural advantages has been added in ourgeneration the romantic interest of Mr. Thomas Hardy’snovels of rural life and character, in which real placesare introduced with a lavish hand.  The identity ofthose places is easily resolved; and, that featperformed, there is that compelling force in his geniuswhich inevitably, sooner or later, magneticallydraws those who have read, to see for themselves whatmanner of places and what folk they must be in real life,from whose characteristics such poignant tragedy, suchsuave and admirable comedy, have been evolved. I have many a time explored Egdon, and observed thejustness of the novelist’s description of that sullenwaste: have traversed Blackmoor Vale, where“the fields are never brown and the springs neverdry,” but where the roads—it is acyclist’s criticism—are always shockingly bad:in fine, have visit