Dorfield

“ Her object in life was to marry them well and it was said by the knowing ones of Dorfield that she kept a list of the eligible young men of the town and carefully cultivated them in degree according to their eligibility. ”

“ These were the people who had generally resisted all former pleadings of the regular committee and had resolved to ignore the bond sale altogether. But perhaps their chagrin was equalled by their satisfaction in having been won over by a pretty girl, whose manner and appearance were alike irresistible.
The men of Dorfield are a fair sample of men everywhere. At this period the full meaning of the responsibilities we had assumed in this tremendous struggle was by no means fully realized. The war was too far away, and life at home was still running in its accustomed grooves. ”

“ It had only taken her an instant to formulate her speech.
"I'm interested in the poor children of Dorfield," she began, "having been sent here as the agent of an organization devoted to clothing our needy little ones. I find, since I have been soliciting subscriptions in Dorfield and investigating the requirements of the poor, that there are a lot of boys, especially, in this city who are in rags, and I want to purchase for them as many outfits as my money will allow. ”

“ If you can follow to-day's success until Saturday, and secure our quota of subscriptions to the bonds, not only Dorfield but all the nation will be proud of your achievement."
"We shall do our best," replied the girl, simply, although her cheeks glowed pink under such praise. "There are enough slackers still to be interviewed to bring the quota up to the required amount and with to-day's success to hearten us, I am sure we shall end the week triumphantly." ”

“ Dorfield was a much bigger town than Beverly; it was quite a large city, indeed; perhaps she could escape the supervision of the detective, in some way, and by outwitting him find herself free to seek the Conant's home. She would try this and circumstances must decide her plan of action. Always there was the chance that she misjudged the little man.
As the conductor called the station the train halted and the girl passed the rear seat, where the man had his bare head half out the open window, and descended from the car to the platform. ”

“ My idea is a kind of higgledy-piggledy place, a place where one can get anything under heaven that is needed, because, if we happen not to be carrying it in stock, we will take orders for it if there is time to wait for an order or we will go out and shop for it if the thing can be bought in Dorfield. ”

“ Grandpa Jim had remarked. “If there is any doubt about whether we should or shouldn’t ask anybody, for goodness’ sake let’s ask them. It is better to err on that side of the ledger.” And so the invitation ended by being general, much to the delight and satisfaction of Dorfield. Mrs. Wright, after all, might have spared herself her trouble of maneuvering for invitations for her daughters.
The bridesmaids had arrived. They looked very like the bunches of sweet peas they were to carry. As for the bride, no lily of the field could have been fairer. ”

“ A DINNER PARTY There was some excitement in the Wright family when Elizabeth came speeding home in Billy McGraw’s stylish little racer. They had grown accustomed if not resigned to the peculiarities of this member of the family who insisted upon working all day in a funny shop with an unstylish little person, the daughter of a policeman so they understood. Her only value in their eyes was that she was a friend of Mary Louise’s. As has been remarked before, that fact went a long way in the opinion of Dorfield towards establishing a person as worthy of being cultivated. ”

“ Joining forces with Josie O'Gorman and Elizabeth Wright in the quaint Higgledy-Piggledy Shop, she opened a millinery department and was soon swamped with orders for smart hats by the elite of Dorfield and old-fashioned bonnets for the ancient ladies who refused to wear hats. When Danny came back, not having gone to a watery grave after all, and the lost fortune was found, Mary Louise again stood the test of being rich and beloved.
"Nothing can spoil our Mary Louise," Josie O'Gorman declared, and Irene Macfarlane smiled from her wheel chair. ”

“ The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he’s to setting.
That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse and worst
Times still succeed the former. ”

“ From Wallingford up to Dorchester the neighbourhood of the river grows more hilly, varied, and picturesque. Dorchester stands half a mile from the river. It can be reached by paddling up the Thame, if you have a small boat; but the best way is to leave the river at Day's Lock, and take a walk across the fields. Dorchester is a delightfully peaceful old place, nestling in stillness and silence and drowsiness. ”

“ It would be night before he reached Dorchester; but there was a moon, and he knew every yard of high road, every grassy ride across the wide barren heath between Cheriton and the old Roman city. He knew the road and he knew his horse, which was as good of its kind as there was to be found in the county of Dorset. He was not a rich man, and he had to work hard for his living, but he was the son of a well-to-do father, and he never stinted the price of the horse that carried him, and which was something more to Theodore Dalbrook than most men’s horses are to them. ”

“ Dorchester, like Wallingford, was a city in ancient British times; it was then called Caer Doren, “the city on the water.” In more recent times the Romans formed a great camp here, the fortifications surrounding which now seem like low, even hills. In Saxon days it was the capital of Wessex. It is very old, and it was very strong and great once. Now it sits aside from the stirring world, and nods and dreams.
Round Clifton Hampden, itself a wonderfully pretty village, old-fashioned, peaceful, and dainty with flowers, the river scenery is rich and beautiful. ”

“ The peculiarity in Dorset is that such natures are not so much the exception as the rule. The Dorset peasantry are gentlefolk by birth. It is not that veneer which the most thorough scoundrel can easily assume, but that native inbred refinement, that perception of beauty and fitness, which is almost, if not quite, a divine gift.
If any one would see for himself how truly this is the character of the Dorset peasant, let him study the works of their poet, William Barnes. ”

“ Of all the statesmen of the day, not one has left a more blameless character than the Earl of Dorset. Dorset took the opportunity of leaving upon record in his will, which would not be read till he had no longer injury or favour to expect in this world, the very high admiration in which his colleague was held by him. ”

“ It is doubtful if any town in England has so many remains of the remote past in its vicinity as Dorchester. Probably the Roman settlement of Durnovaria was a parvenu town to the Celts, whose closely adjacent Dwrinwyr was also an upstart in comparison with the fortified stronghold two miles away to the south; the "place by the black water" being an initial attempt to establish a trading centre by a people rather timidly learning from their Phoenician visitors. ”

“ Mr Dorrit, though he had his castle-building to engage his mind, could not be quite easy in that desolate place. He was far more curious, in every swerve of the carriage, and every cry of the postilions, than he had been since he quitted London. ”

“ For every inch that is not fool is rogue, and who writes of Dorset that he was received by him as a member of his family, and furthermore, rather plaintively, in a letter at Knole, beseeching Lord Dorset’s intervention, as “they have put Durfey’s play before ours, and this day a play of Dryden’s is read to them and that is to be acted before ours too.” ”

“ No, modern Dorchester is not like that, and its chief features—the noble elm avenues, that struck the traveller by road into and out of the town with admiration—have had their exquisite nobility qualified by time and change. ”

“ Coming into Dorchester, the road traverses the water-meadows of the Frome, over the spot called Ten Hatches, and across the little bridges that were the scene of Henchard’s despair, in26 The Mayor of Casterbridge. “Casterbridge,” as everyone familiar with Wessex knows, is Dorchester—and an excellent name, too, for this grave town of early British and Roman antecedents. It would be vain to pretend that Dorchester is picturesque. If you expect in it nodding gables, and half-timbered fifteenth-century buildings to be the note of it, you will experience a disappointment in seeing the real thing. ”

“ Exeter is a delightful old town, but it can scarcely be regarded as the centre of the cycle trade; neither is it in especially easy and short communication with Birmingham. It was the sort of thing that any critic anxious to pick holes in the prospectus might wonder at, and so one of Dorrington's assistants had gone by the night mail to inspect the works. It was from this man that Dorrington, in Birmingham, about noon on the day after Gillett's disaster, received this telegram—
Works here old, disused cloth-mills just out of town. ”

“ In Edward the Confessor’s reign one hundred and twenty houses stood in this Dorset town, which, in comparison with the other towns of the county, came next to Dorchester and Wareham. Bridport, too, had a mint of its own, and its mint-master paid well for the privilege of coining.
The Norman Conquest does not appear to have been an unmixed blessing in these parts. In Domesday Survey the town is shown to have gone back considerably. Twenty houses are stated to be desolate, and the people impoverished. ”

“ Dorset is indeed a greatly varied county in the character of its soils. The sheep-grazing districts may be said to be this of the north-east border, and those other stretches of lofty, almost waterless chalk downs, running due east and west, parallel with the coast, with a similarly lengthy, but broader, stretch in a like direction, from where the downs rise from the Stour at Sturminster Marshall, past Milton Abbas and Cerne Abbas, on to Beaminster. ”

“ However, there is good company, and a good deal of it; and a man that coveted a retreat in this world might as agreeably spend his time and as well in Dorchester as in any town I know in England.
The downs round this town are exceeding pleasant, and come up on, every side, even to the very streets’ end; and here it was that they told me that there were six hundred thousand sheep fed on the downs within six miles of the town—that is, six miles every way, which is twelve miles in diameter, and thirty-six miles in circumference. ”

“ The wonder is, that this community of Dormilhouse should cling to their mountain eyrie so long after the necessity for their living above the clouds has ceased; but it is their home, and they have come to love it, and are satisfied to live and die there. Rather than live elsewhere, they will walk, as some of them do, twelve miles in the early morning, to their work down in the valley of the Durance, and twelve miles home again, in the evenings, to their perch on the rocks at Dormilhouse. ”

“ The southern part of Dorset, especially in the neighbourhood of Poole Harbour, suffered much during the time that the Danes were harrying the coast of England. There were fights at sea in Swanage Bay, there were fights on land round the walls of Wareham, there were burnings of religious houses at Wimborne and Wareham. Then followed the victories of Ælfred, and for a time Dorset had rest. But after Eadward was murdered at “Corfes-geat” by his stepmother Ælfthryth’s order, and the weak King Æthelred was crowned, the Danes gave trouble again. The King first bribed them to land alone ”

“ The hamlet of Holworth is, indeed, worthy of being a portion of the parish that is acknowledged to be one of the most beautiful places in Dorset. The village of Milton lies enfolded between richly-wooded hills, at the foot of a wonderfully picturesque descent. Sir Frederick Treves, in his Highways and Byways in Dorset, says that “there is nothing like to it in any part of England.” He calls it a “surprising” village, “a toy town.” ”

“ He and my mother saw, from Maumbury, about 1832, the Princess Victoria with her mother, passing in their carriage on the way to Weymouth. My brother, since 1880 Bishop in Mid-China, recalls the bringing into the town, in carts, about 1834, of loads of saplings sent to be planted along the London Road; and a noble avenue they made, which now, alas! is no more than a relic of itself.
I just remember the days of the stage coaches in Dorchester. I see the old Emerald still, and hear the bugle of the guard. In 1852 I travelled by coach to Dorchester from Bath. ”

“ A decade later Miss Burney (Mme. D’Arblay) gives a lively picture of Dorchester as she saw it when travelling in [Pg 151] the suite of George III. to Weymouth: “The city had so antique an air, I longed to investigate its old buildings. The houses have the most ancient appearance of any that are inhabited that I have happened to see; and inhabited they were indeed! There was an amazing quantity of indigenous residers—old women and young children,” who, as she shrewdly remarks, could not have come in from a distance, and so formed an index of population. ”

“ The growing lad walked out to Dorchester every Saturday night to spend Sunday at home and attend divine service in the “Dorchester Old Meeting-House,” the same in which I first saw and heard Edward Everett Hale, over forty years later. The youth arose, in all weathers, before the sun on Monday morning in order to be at his place of business at seven o’clock. When he was sixteen, his employer removed to Richmond, Virginia, and took his favorite clerk with him. From Boston to the capital of the Old Dominion was then a fortnight’s journey by the quickest mode of travel. ”