The Real and Imagined Dorset of Thomas Hardy : The Victorian novelist’s vivid descriptions inspire travelers roaming southern England

Many Thomas Hardy novels begin with an anonymous character wending his way along a country road toward a destination as yet unrealized. As my husband and I drove the Dorset roads at the start of a three-day literary pilgrimage focused on Hardy, I strongly felt the analogy. In this county in Southern England, we hoped to find the settings used by Hardy in his novels, to come closer to the “sense of place” that distinguishes his style and provides a backdrop for his tragically engaging characters.

Hardy’s creative life spanned the late Victorian and early modern periods. Although he attained literary stature in his own day, he remained a man of the heaths, country lanes and villages that make up his native Dorset. In his novels, the familiar settings of his homeland receive faithful but poetic treatment. The heath next to his Bockhampton home becomes a metaphor for the mysterious connection between man and his natural community; the many little rivers that water lower Dorset splice the wanderings of dislocated characters; the Iron Age forts, Roman roads and prehistoric barrows show the antiquity of the human drama.

Place names in the novels reinforce the sense of antiquity. Hardy calls Dorset and its environs Wessex, the 5th-Century Saxon name for the haunt of both Lear and Alfred the Great. Other names undergo a similar metamorphosis. In fact, many guidebooks and maps list sites under both the real name and the name in Hardy’s novels. I had researched two of my favorite novels, “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” and “Return of the Native” in two such guides: “The Michelin Guide to The West Country” and Anne-Marie Edward’s “Discovering Hardy’s Wessex.” My husband was game to try some literary exploring as he also enjoyed Hardy’s writing.

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We had reserved a room for three nights at Summer Lodge, a country hotel in Evershot. The village, which appears in “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” as Evershead, has a quaint main street lined with private homes, a general store, a bakery and an inn. The church of St. John Osmond and Tess’ cottage, where the beleaguered heroine of the novel stopped for refreshment on a journey, mark the end of the village street. Summer Lodge, formerly the dower house (meaning, basically, that it came with the title) of the Earls of Ilchester, sits back from the main street on five acres that extend behind the village buildings.

When we drove through the gates into Summer Lodge, we knew that we had made a good choice. We saw a stately house with a broad facade that fronted on a walled garden and a croquet lawn. Hotel guests had brought their afternoon tea onto the lawn, and they were scattered about in small groups on low-slung canvas chairs. One couple had a champagne bucket between them.

Our room, bright and large, looked out over the walled garden to the fields beyond. Small bunches of flowers sat on window sills and table tops. Fresh flowers seemed to be everywhere in Summer Lodge. A large bouquet of yellow and white mums filled one window in the drawing room and appeared to spill out into the garden.

Thomas Hardy, who earned his living as an architect before his writing could support him, designed the drawing room. It is the heart of Summer Lodge. Guests gather there for afternoon tea and before and after dinner. Owners Nigel and Margaret Corbett create a welcoming atmosphere. Nigel greets dinner guests in the drawing room while they sip aperitifs and study the menu. He consults and advises and calls guests to the dining room when dinner is ready. Margaret makes the flower arrangements and helps her husband oversee daily operations. Civility and good food marked our three-day stay. Reinforced by the wonderful meals and restful setting, we would set out each day to tour literary Dorset.

We wanted to visit the Hardy cottage and his grave in addition to sites from the novels. We planned to start with the graveyard, which offered a macabre touch since it holds only the author’s heart. His ashes rest in Poet’s Corner, Westminster Abbey, but, true to his wishes, his heart remains in the countryside he loved.

Since our walk began in Dorchester, the market town and capital of Dorset, we stopped by the tourist information office there. Although there were many books and pamphlets designed for self-guided tours through Hardy country, no group tours are organized except during the International Thomas Hardy Conference, scheduled for one week every other summer. (The next one will be in 1994.) The tourist office could arrange for a private guide at a cost of $60 for half a day. We felt safe with the research I had done, however, and decided to rely on that expertise.

From the northern edge of Dorchester, our walk would take us on a public footpath next to the Frome River. We followed the map well enough when it directed us through the town streets, but we were not so adept once we hit country terrain. We found the Frome, which appears in many Hardy novels. Not knowing what a public footpath looked like, we first chose a sidewalk that ran through a small housing development next to the river and led us back to where we started.

We decided to focus on something more rural and picked a path with trodden grass that led us to an impenetrable stand of trees. We then noticed a church on a high hill to our right, and so we hiked up there. Many worthy people may be buried there, but Hardy wasn’t. Finally we asked two local women who showed us the way.

Finally on the right footpath, we cut through several fields where sheep and cows were grazing. As each field ended, we had to swing back an enormous iron gate and firmly relatch it to keep the animals from wandering. We met no other person, and eventually came to another signpost directing us down a tree-arched lane that ended at the churchyard.

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We found Hardy’s grave close to the front gate. The churchyard was small, carefully tended and eerily quiet. Lichen grew on the low sarcophagus that holds Hardy’s heart and the remains of his two wives. Standing gracefully behind the graves stood the pointed windows and buttress of St. Michael’s Church.

As we walked back to Dorchester, we decided that we would hire a guide. Our time was limited, and we were obviously maladept at country ambling. To see some of the Hardy sites meant crossing fields, pinelands and open heath without benefit of marked public footpaths. To city folk like us, cows look peaceful fenced into a field as we whizzed by in a car. Walking unescorted through herds of lumbering bovines was another matter.

On our return, the Dorset Tourist Information Center contacted Veronica Long, a guide who was trained and certified by the Thomas Hardy Society; she agreed to meet us the next afternoon at 1 p.m. in a Dorchester parking lot.

We were to recognize her by her blue Ford Fiesta. She would recognize us because we looked like Americans, a scarce commodity in Dorset even with its literary and scenic attractions. Exactly at 1, Veronica arrived. A woman of uncertain age, Veronica stood 5 feet tall in her canvas sneakers, green skirt and cardigan. Red-and-gray hair poked out from a sailor’s hat. We all bunched up in her car and planned our day. “Right. Now, you want to see the ‘Tess’ sites, and some of the spots on the heath from ‘Return of the Native.’ You’ll want to see the birth cottage too. We’ll start there.”

And start we did. Veronica set a brisk pace, intent on giving us full value for our money. Only standing dinner reservations prevented us from inspecting country churches and heath paths by flashlight.

We reached the Hardy birthplace by a long, wooded path. Hardy described his home as “a long, low cottage with a hipped roof of thatch, having dormer windows breaking up into the eaves.” Fronted by a traditional English garden colorful with foxgloves, delphiniums, day lilies and snapdragons, it remains a solitary spot with echoes of the Victorian characters who came to life in Hardy’s imagination while he lived there.

We walked back to the car by a lane that marks the old Roman road that once ran from London to Dorchester. The road exists in many places as a footpath, and in other spots where it is part of enclosed farmland it must be left uncultivated. As we drove around, Veronica would point out the old Roman road--a band of grasses, wild angelica and vibrant poppies, eight feet wide.

Our next round of stops focused on Egdon Heath; the name exists only in Hardy’s writings, but he uses it to include a series of heaths that in his day stretched almost to the English Channel on the south. In “Return of the Native,” he wrote, “The seas changed, the fields changed, the rivers, the villages, and the people changed, yet Egdon remained.” Ironically, the heath, which presented the same landscape to a Victorian as to a Druid, is now pine forest planted under a government reforestation project. It is still a lonely land sparse with houses, a bland palette of coniferous green and browns with a band of hills that always seem to be in the distance. In small areas, the heathscape, marked by green and purple heather, fern-like bracken and gorse, remains.

The heath looms large in “Return of the Native.” The setting always reminds me of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window,” but on a larger scale. Each character lives on the edge of the heath and can glimpse the indiscretions and failed lives of their fellow-dwellers. The romantic heroine, Eustacia Vye, often meets her illicit lover, Damon Wildeve, at Rainbarrow, the largest of the Iron Age burial mounts that swell the heath hills. They signal each other with bonfires. Veronica showed us Rainbarrow, an elusive spot, and took us to the cottage where Eustacia and her husband lived. The cottage is hidden away in the pine forest and doesn’t appear in the Hardy guidebooks. Veronica, however, knew the owner, which sanctioned our trespassing.

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Midafternoon our guide suggested we stop for tea, an idea which delighted me. I imagined a Dorset cream tea served in a quaint riverside garden; I was afloat in dreams of picturesqueness. My dream deflated as we drove into the Dorset Tank Museum. Soldiers in fatigues and armored combat vehicles reminded me more of the old Soviet May Day parade than of a country outing. Veronica, however, recommended it as a “hygienic comfort stop with reliable food,” an apt description. With a decent tea under our belts, we were ready to take to the roads once again.

During the late afternoon and early evening, we visited sites associated with “Tess of the D’Urbervilles.” We finished our “Tess” tour in Bere Regis at the parish church of St. John the Baptist. The tiny, chilly church felt restful at the close of a long day. Built in the perpendicular Gothic style, the church holds the family vault of the Tuberville family, Hardy’s inspiration for the D’Urbervilles. Its famous oak roof, rich with crests and gold and red tracery, seems pinned in place by lifesize figures of the 12 apostles jutting out from its sides.

Here, a poignant scene from “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” takes place. Tess is a poor country girl whose life changes for the worse when her family learns that they are the last descendants of the once powerful D’Urbervilles. After having lost their home, Tess’ family camps against the walls of St. John’s. Tess wanders into the church and, seeing the entrance to the family vaults, wishes that she could be with her ancestors in their sepulchers. “Why am I on the wrong side of the door?” she moans. As the gloom deepened in the church, our phlegmatic guide surprised us by reading the scene from the novel, thus ending our tour with a touch of drama.

As my husband and I drove back to our hotel after parting with Veronica, we admired our guide’s conscientious approach to her job; her knowledge of architecture, local history and botany enriched our understanding. My husband enjoyed the chance to see byways and aspects of life normally closed off to a tourist, but he would have been content to let Hardy’s landscape exist only in his imagination. He felt like a reader who pictures a character in his mind’s eye and then turns the page to find an illustration completely at odds with his idea.

While granting him the aesthetic high ground, I reveled in seeing the exact spot where Eustacia Vye drowned, at walking in the same water meadows as Tess and her courting beau and in looking down on the wild heath that matched the souls of so many Hardy characters. He insisted, “None of it’s real, you know.” I guess that is where we differ.

GUIDEBOOK

Return to Thomas Hardy’s Dorset

Getting there: By car from London: Follow the M3 West to Route A303 West (interchange is near North Waltham); connect to A37 South near Ilchester; Evershot is directly off Route A37. A few miles outside Dorchester, the A37 connects to local roads that go into that city; driving time is three hours, distance is 140 miles. The “M” roads are motorways with no stopping. The “A” roads contain frequent roundabouts, or circles that are well marked and not too alarming because the area is not heavily traveled. You pass Stonehenge on the A303, and both Salisbury and Winchester are reasonable lunch detours.

By train from London: British Rail trains run every two hours to Dorchester from Waterloo station; advance booking is unnecessary. Cost is about $47 one way, economy-class; traveling time is 2 1/2 hours. Phone BritRail in America at (800) 677-8585. For BritRail in England, Waterloo Station, telephone locally 071-928-5100.

By bus from London, take the 6 p.m. bus from Victoria Station for a 9:30 p.m. arrival in Dorchester. Service is offered only once a day. Cost is $14 one way. Phone the National Bus Co. locally at 071-730-0202.

Getting around: Local buses, taxis and rental cars are available for traveling within Dorset. Hotels and guest houses provide information. Write Transportation and Engineering Department, Dorset County Council, County Hall, Dorchester, Dorset DT1 1XJ, for a booklet, “Public Transport in Rural Dorset.”

Where to stay: Summer Lodge (Evershot, Dorset DT2 0JR; from the United States, telephone 011-44-935-83424) charges a per-person rate that includes English breakfast, Dorset cream tea and four-course dinner with coffee, starting at $135. The hotel has a pool heated to 80 degrees and two tennis courts, one grass.

The Acorn Inn (28 Fore St., Evershot, Dorset DT2 0JW; tel. 011-44-935-83228), a small hotel with a restaurant, sits right on the village street. Rates are $88-$145 for two. In “Tess of the D’Urbervilles,” it appears as the Sow and Acorn. The Rectory House (Fore Street., Evershot, Dorset DT2 0JW; tel. 011-44-935-83273) lies on a quieter part of the village street, surrounded by gardens. Cost is $42 a night for two.

The King’s Arms (High Street, Dorchester, Dorset DT1 1HF, tel. 011-44-305-265353) is featured in Hardy’s “The Mayor of Casterbridge.” It lies in the heart of Dorchester, an appealing market town with a history that dates to Roman times. Cost is $116 a night for two. Prices on above three hotels include English breakfast and tax.

Where to eat: Summer Lodge serves lunch and dinner to non-hotel guests. Fixed-price lunch is $25 for two courses and coffee; dinner is $42 for four courses and coffee, tax included. Summer Lodge is known for its kitchen, which is run by up-and-coming chef Roger Jones, who cooks using local foods.

At the Acorn Inn, lunch is about $12, dinner $22. Lunch at The King’s Arms is about $7, dinner $22. The Mock Turtle (34 High West St. Dorchester; tel. 011-44-305-265011) serves French and English food and is noted for its fish; a three-course meal is about $28. Both the Oven Door (8 Cornhill, Dorchester) and the Horse with the Red Umbrella (10 High West St., Dorchester) sell good, inexpensive takeout pastries and sandwiches.

For more information: Contact the West Dorset Tourist Information Center, 1 Acland Road, Dorchester, Dorset DT1 1JW; tel. 011-44-305-267992. They will arrange tours with guides from the Thomas Hardy Society, and conduct walking tours of Dorchester in season on Thursdays for $2.25. To visit the Hardy Cottage at High Bockhampton, three miles east of Dorchester near the A35, it is best to call in advance; telephone locally 0305-262366. Or contact the British Tourist Authority, 350 S. Figueroa St., Suite 450, Los Angeles 90071, (213) 628-3525.