Our B&B is on the street behind him--the Dorset Cereal Factory is behind the tree--nothing but fields and hedgerows to the right.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Goodbye Dorchester
So tonight we had an early dinner at Wetherspoon (sort of a British Denny’s that stays open during the usual closing time from 3-6pm) and noticed that they have free wireless. We had just paid five pounds for an hour at Starbucks in the old Post Office. Oh well. We bought practically the last bouquets at the flower stall for our hostess, three for a pound at the end of the day, and decided again not to take the number 31 bus--it does exist, however, passing us on the walk back to our B&B. Here is John, on Mansell Square, Poundbury. Our B&B is on the street behind him--the Dorset Cereal Factory is behind the tree--nothing but fields and hedgerows to the right.
Our B&B is on the street behind him--the Dorset Cereal Factory is behind the tree--nothing but fields and hedgerows to the right.
Things I Learned at the Dorset County Museum:
1. Maiden Castle, one of many hill forts in Dorset, and largest of its type in Europe, was first inhabited between 10,000 and 5000 BC, when the climate was still cold and wet at the end of the last Ice Age, and when there might have been a land crossing to Europe; it was enlarged and fortified over thousands of years until the last desperate defense against the Roman invasion; the Romans camped there until building the nearby town of Durnovaria.
2. The Cerne Giant, which our kids may remember from a previous trip (I’ll have to find a photo online), was carved out of the chalk hillside either by stone age man; by the Romans; or by 17th Century pranksters. There are scholars arguing for each origin.
3. On the other hand, the chalk horse east of Weymouth was definitely carved out of the chalk by bored regiments stationed on the south coast to defend against invasion by O’ Boney, Napoleon Bonaparte.
4. Dorchester was Puritan during the English Civil War, and pro-Cromwell. Forty years later they supported the cause of the Duke of Monmouth, the bastard son of Charles II, who led a Protestant rebellion against his Catholic uncle James II. Monmouth landed in Lyme Regis and the countryside flocked to him. The rebels were quickly defeated, however, and Judge Jeffries condemned over 70 of them to death in the Bloody Assize; they were hung, drawn, and quartered, and their body parts spread across the county as a warning to the populace.
2. The Cerne Giant, which our kids may remember from a previous trip (I’ll have to find a photo online), was carved out of the chalk hillside either by stone age man; by the Romans; or by 17th Century pranksters. There are scholars arguing for each origin.
3. On the other hand, the chalk horse east of Weymouth was definitely carved out of the chalk by bored regiments stationed on the south coast to defend against invasion by O’ Boney, Napoleon Bonaparte.
4. Dorchester was Puritan during the English Civil War, and pro-Cromwell. Forty years later they supported the cause of the Duke of Monmouth, the bastard son of Charles II, who led a Protestant rebellion against his Catholic uncle James II. Monmouth landed in Lyme Regis and the countryside flocked to him. The rebels were quickly defeated, however, and Judge Jeffries condemned over 70 of them to death in the Bloody Assize; they were hung, drawn, and quartered, and their body parts spread across the county as a warning to the populace.
August 2 The Best Little Museum in the World
This morning was the official Annual Meeting of the Hardy Society, but as you can see, only the die-hard[y] members stayed on. 
John and I lasted about ten minutes. Here I am in front of the United Reform Church where most of the sessions were held. 
Just up the street is the Cornhill Market, 
much more lively on a Saturday than earlier in the week. John and I stopped at an antique book shop, where I found a little illustrated version of Lamb’s stories of Shakespeare, which I remember from childhood, and a first edition (probably the only edition) of Dorothy Sayers’ religious plays. We sat in St. Peter’s Church for a few minutes (here are pretty Victorian panels of the Christmas shepherds),
then went on to the Dorset County Museum, which is my favorite museum in the world. 
As I told the curator, it is the only museum I know where you are forced to walk on 2000 year old Roman mosaic tile.
John and I lasted about ten minutes. Here I am in front of the United Reform Church where most of the sessions were held. Just up the street is the Cornhill Market, much more lively on a Saturday than earlier in the week. John and I stopped at an antique book shop, where I found a little illustrated version of Lamb’s stories of Shakespeare, which I remember from childhood, and a first edition (probably the only edition) of Dorothy Sayers’ religious plays. We sat in St. Peter’s Church for a few minutes (here are pretty Victorian panels of the Christmas shepherds), then went on to the Dorset County Museum, which is my favorite museum in the world. As I told the curator, it is the only museum I know where you are forced to walk on 2000 year old Roman mosaic tile.
Saturday, August 2, 2008
August 1 Farewell Dinner
I was sorrowful that as a non-Hardy Society member I was not invited to the farewell dinner in the Corn Exchange, so then decided to just ask, and they let me in! I sat next to Stanley and John, two retired bachelor Anglican ministers who live together (at Stanley’s description) in a former monastery near the Barbican [London] that was set up by a wealthy London commoner as a public school and a home for impoverished gentlemen. The public school moved away in the 19th Century, but the home for poor old men (John’s description) is still there. We discussed modern architecture and the social services provided by our respective churches.
I also visited with Patrick, a retired teacher, who on hearing I’m a Mormon asked if I am one of [my John’s] many wives. I’m always tempted to say yes, but didn’t. Stanley asked if the news was accurate about the polygamist group in Texas marrying underage girls, and when I said probably so, he was quite shocked.
At the conclusion of the dinner, the Society auctioned several lots of memorabilia re: Hardy, under the guidance of a famous auctioneer, who was very funny, and made people buy things at prices I’m sure they were not happy with.
John and I sat on our hands. Miriam, a slight lady with a gray pageboy bob, told me afterward that she was surprised to see us not bid on anything. “We expect the Americans to buy it all,” she said. I‘m not sure if she approved or disapproved of that. “Not with this exchange rate,” I said. And not at John’s teacher’s salary.
I also visited with Patrick, a retired teacher, who on hearing I’m a Mormon asked if I am one of [my John’s] many wives. I’m always tempted to say yes, but didn’t. Stanley asked if the news was accurate about the polygamist group in Texas marrying underage girls, and when I said probably so, he was quite shocked.
At the conclusion of the dinner, the Society auctioned several lots of memorabilia re: Hardy, under the guidance of a famous auctioneer, who was very funny, and made people buy things at prices I’m sure they were not happy with.
John and I sat on our hands. Miriam, a slight lady with a gray pageboy bob, told me afterward that she was surprised to see us not bid on anything. “We expect the Americans to buy it all,” she said. I‘m not sure if she approved or disapproved of that. “Not with this exchange rate,” I said. And not at John’s teacher’s salary.
Clarifications
I think I am going deaf. And/or memory is even more malleable than I had believed it to be. I know this blog is for family consumption and I make no pretensions to journalistic precision, but I do like to get things right. So, even though these clarifications will matter to no one who reads this blog but me:
1. Linda has one son in Boston. Her other children, daughters, are in Winchester, not Brazil. Julia has a son in Brazil.
2. Margaret and David Grantham (not Graham) live in Warwick, etc.
3. [An error of omission] T.E. Lawrence and Florence Hardy were friends, even though Lawrence had no use for women in the romantic sense. As per Stephen Mottram’s handout, Lawrence wrote to another good female friend, Charlotte Shaw (wife of GBS): Poor Mrs. Hardy, though. She has given up so many years, just to keep him alive, & he was so difficult, so unlike a great man. Not serene, not over-seeing, not happy. No health in him: she can’t have liked him really. He would not let her have any life of her own, & now it is too late to start. They couldn’t laugh together, you know, heartily. And she is so nice… Hardy and Lawrence knew each other after both were famous. Maybe they gave each other peace from pushing and star-struck fans.
4. The shaggy little ponies are called “heath croppers,” not “tree croppers.”
5. Judge Jeffries’ Bloody Assize was in 1685. I’m still not sure what it was about. The Tolpuddle Martyrs were six Dorset farm laborers tried and sentenced to deportation for forming a union. The Yetties sang a song about them (I don’t know how old): apparently, one of the union’s activities was to threaten farmers with fire if they didn’t get rid of the newly invented thrashing machines, which were starving out the laborers and their families. “The flames grow high in Dorset,” begins the chorus, “the ricks of corn are burning.” Maybe it will be on John’s CD.
6. “Puddle” was “Piddle” until a visit by Queen Victoria. I know I won’t remember them all, but there is Tolpuddle, Affpuddle, Briantspuddle, Piddlehinton, Piddletrenthide, Puddletown, and Poole, of course (although I don’t think the last one’s actually related).
7. I was commiserating with a librarian at the Dorchester Library (at the Top o’ Town near the car park and the Hardy statue) about her job as a tech consultant now that everybody uses computers and the internet. “They took all the really interesting old things out of the library and put them in the Dorset Records Office, and now I don’t ever do those lovely long searches through the archives for people--it’s no longer the job I signed up for.” So I asked her the difference between heath and moor, and she got out the big old volumes of the OED, unabridged, to look them up (while people waited impatiently in line for help with the internet). The two words were used as synonyms for each other, and there was no definite difference, except under “moor” was mentioned bog, marsh, peat, and fen, but not under “heath.” Heath was equated with “down” and “upland,” too, however, so I guess altitude isn’t a difference. Both have the flora of “heath, heather, and ling,” and the same fauna listed. Does that clarify everything?
8. It is the Corn Exchange, not the Corn Hall, although the Town Hall is in the same building, on the upper level. Here is a photo of the Town Pump with the Corn Exchange behind it, across the High Street.
1. Linda has one son in Boston. Her other children, daughters, are in Winchester, not Brazil. Julia has a son in Brazil.
2. Margaret and David Grantham (not Graham) live in Warwick, etc.
3. [An error of omission] T.E. Lawrence and Florence Hardy were friends, even though Lawrence had no use for women in the romantic sense. As per Stephen Mottram’s handout, Lawrence wrote to another good female friend, Charlotte Shaw (wife of GBS): Poor Mrs. Hardy, though. She has given up so many years, just to keep him alive, & he was so difficult, so unlike a great man. Not serene, not over-seeing, not happy. No health in him: she can’t have liked him really. He would not let her have any life of her own, & now it is too late to start. They couldn’t laugh together, you know, heartily. And she is so nice… Hardy and Lawrence knew each other after both were famous. Maybe they gave each other peace from pushing and star-struck fans.
4. The shaggy little ponies are called “heath croppers,” not “tree croppers.”
5. Judge Jeffries’ Bloody Assize was in 1685. I’m still not sure what it was about. The Tolpuddle Martyrs were six Dorset farm laborers tried and sentenced to deportation for forming a union. The Yetties sang a song about them (I don’t know how old): apparently, one of the union’s activities was to threaten farmers with fire if they didn’t get rid of the newly invented thrashing machines, which were starving out the laborers and their families. “The flames grow high in Dorset,” begins the chorus, “the ricks of corn are burning.” Maybe it will be on John’s CD.
6. “Puddle” was “Piddle” until a visit by Queen Victoria. I know I won’t remember them all, but there is Tolpuddle, Affpuddle, Briantspuddle, Piddlehinton, Piddletrenthide, Puddletown, and Poole, of course (although I don’t think the last one’s actually related).
7. I was commiserating with a librarian at the Dorchester Library (at the Top o’ Town near the car park and the Hardy statue) about her job as a tech consultant now that everybody uses computers and the internet. “They took all the really interesting old things out of the library and put them in the Dorset Records Office, and now I don’t ever do those lovely long searches through the archives for people--it’s no longer the job I signed up for.” So I asked her the difference between heath and moor, and she got out the big old volumes of the OED, unabridged, to look them up (while people waited impatiently in line for help with the internet). The two words were used as synonyms for each other, and there was no definite difference, except under “moor” was mentioned bog, marsh, peat, and fen, but not under “heath.” Heath was equated with “down” and “upland,” too, however, so I guess altitude isn’t a difference. Both have the flora of “heath, heather, and ling,” and the same fauna listed. Does that clarify everything?
8. It is the Corn Exchange, not the Corn Hall, although the Town Hall is in the same building, on the upper level. Here is a photo of the Town Pump with the Corn Exchange behind it, across the High Street.
Friday, August 1, 2008
The Yetties
We went to another folk concert, this time in the Corn Hall on the High Street. The Yetties, named for their town Yetminster, were popular nationwide during the 70s. In some ways they reminded me of the Beach Boys--both singing about the traditions of their native area, both sort of good-ole-boy, both obviously playing many years together. Maybe later I can upload a couple of clips of video from the concert.“Fill up the cider cup and have another round; of all the drinks of England, no better can be found!” We missed the cider tasting (and Hardy-passage-reading) scheduled immediately before the concert--we were having dinner at Judge Jeffries Inn
(Hanging Judge of the Bloody Assizes)--but most of the rest of the audience were pretty well lubricated by the time of the concert, and there was much laughter and singing of choruses. It was fun. John bought The Yetties’ double CD in which they read Hardy poetry and play his personal fiddle. Their photos on the CD are much younger and svelter.The rain poured down outside the open doors of the Corn Hall during the concert, but the time it was over at 11 p.m., it had stopped, and we splashed home through a cool breeze, tryiing to miss stepping on slugs and snails on the pavement.
July 31 T.E. Lawrence and Mrs. Hardy
We ventured another coach tour, despite the mixed pleasures of the last one--this time led by Stephen Mottram, 
a tall, ambling, crook-tooth man with a sharp sense of humor and willingness to gossip while purportedly debunking the rumors about long-dead literary personalities. I must say first off that Peter O’Toole looks exactly like Lawrence, it is amazing, except that Lawrence was short (and I don‘t know if O‘Toole was).
Stephen had written a long and interesting handout for the tour, so for me there was more background than on some of the trips. We rode to Moreton,
Moreford in Hardy’s Wessex, and walked up to St. Nicholas Church. Here is John near an ivied cedar tree in the graveyard. 
The inside of the church was blown out by a WWII German bomb, and the new etched windows, all in a theme of light, are very interesting. My favorites were the Galaxy Window and this, The Days of Darkness. 
Notice the smoking candles.
The St. Nicholas pastor refused a Lawrence memorial in his graveyard, so he is buried in a cemetery a short walk away.
Here is the cemetery cat asleep in the bracken--
bowls of food and water are set out behind the headstone--somehow it seems like Lawrence asked for that tradition to be initiated, but it hardly seems possible he had such foresight, as he died in a motorcycle accident. I must have heard wrong. But he did threaten suicide occasionally, once memorably to the Prime Minister, if he were to be denied reinlistment in the RAF (he was allowed in). We saw Bovington Camp, still full of uniformed soldiers, and Clouds Hill, Lawrence’s cottage, and made a dramatic stop in the middle of the narrow tree-shaded lane where he (non-fatally) clipped the two boys on bicycles and flew to his own death.
Near Moreton (and running through Dorchester) is the River Frome.
Signs near the ford warn not to go upstream or downstream, as nesting swans will attack if disturbed. Boys were playing on a little island in the center of the stream. 
They are probably used to coach-loads of old people going by--a television crew was setting up a shooting at St. Nicholas when we arrived, and we chased them from the Lawrence gravesite too. They waited for quite a long time, giving us grumbly looks, but the Hardy Society is like a star in its course, and will not be moved from its appointed rounds.
Last on our tour was a visit to Egdon Heath,
partially-imaginary setting to Return of the Native. I wondered to my tour-mates what is the difference between a heath and a moor, as there seems to be one but no one is quite sure what it is. A heath is sandy and flat in the lowlands, while a moor is boggy and upland, seems to be the consensus. Heather grows on both. 
The little heath ponies are called “tree croppers” in Hardy’s writing, I think.
a tall, ambling, crook-tooth man with a sharp sense of humor and willingness to gossip while purportedly debunking the rumors about long-dead literary personalities. I must say first off that Peter O’Toole looks exactly like Lawrence, it is amazing, except that Lawrence was short (and I don‘t know if O‘Toole was).Stephen had written a long and interesting handout for the tour, so for me there was more background than on some of the trips. We rode to Moreton,
Moreford in Hardy’s Wessex, and walked up to St. Nicholas Church. Here is John near an ivied cedar tree in the graveyard. The inside of the church was blown out by a WWII German bomb, and the new etched windows, all in a theme of light, are very interesting. My favorites were the Galaxy Window and this, The Days of Darkness. Notice the smoking candles.The St. Nicholas pastor refused a Lawrence memorial in his graveyard, so he is buried in a cemetery a short walk away.
Here is the cemetery cat asleep in the bracken--bowls of food and water are set out behind the headstone--somehow it seems like Lawrence asked for that tradition to be initiated, but it hardly seems possible he had such foresight, as he died in a motorcycle accident. I must have heard wrong. But he did threaten suicide occasionally, once memorably to the Prime Minister, if he were to be denied reinlistment in the RAF (he was allowed in). We saw Bovington Camp, still full of uniformed soldiers, and Clouds Hill, Lawrence’s cottage, and made a dramatic stop in the middle of the narrow tree-shaded lane where he (non-fatally) clipped the two boys on bicycles and flew to his own death.Near Moreton (and running through Dorchester) is the River Frome.
Signs near the ford warn not to go upstream or downstream, as nesting swans will attack if disturbed. Boys were playing on a little island in the center of the stream. They are probably used to coach-loads of old people going by--a television crew was setting up a shooting at St. Nicholas when we arrived, and we chased them from the Lawrence gravesite too. They waited for quite a long time, giving us grumbly looks, but the Hardy Society is like a star in its course, and will not be moved from its appointed rounds.Last on our tour was a visit to Egdon Heath,
partially-imaginary setting to Return of the Native. I wondered to my tour-mates what is the difference between a heath and a moor, as there seems to be one but no one is quite sure what it is. A heath is sandy and flat in the lowlands, while a moor is boggy and upland, seems to be the consensus. Heather grows on both. The little heath ponies are called “tree croppers” in Hardy’s writing, I think.
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