=--Train from Paddington. Great Western Rly.
The centre of the district in the south-west of England which has been
labelled with its ancient Saxon name of Wessex, may be found at the
old-fashioned town of Dorchester. This is the Mecca of the whole
countryside so vividly portrayed in Mr. Hardy's numerous romances
dealing with the rustic life of the west country. On market-days,
Dorchester is crowded with carriers' vans and innumerable vehicles which
have brought in the farmers and their families from remote corners of
the surrounding country, and it is then that one is able to select
examples of many of the characters created by the novelist. To get at
these folk in their homes, one may journey in almost any direction from
Dorchester. The streets of Dorchester are suggestive of Mr. Hardy's
works at every turn, so much so that the wayfarer may almost feel that
he is taking an expurgated part in _The Mayor of Casterbridge_. A large
old-fashioned house near St. Peter's Church seems to correspond to
Lucetta's residence--High Place Hall. Then, the comfortable bay-windows
of the "King's Arms," an old hostelry belonging to coaching days,
suggests recollections of Henchard, who dined there on the occasion of
the memorable banquet, when he threw down the challenge so quickly taken
up by Farfrae.
Going up South Street one passes on the right the Grammar School,
founded in 1579 by a certain Thomas Hardy, an ancestor of all the Dorset
Hardys--Nelson's friend and the Wessex novelist being the most
distinguished among them.
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