Dorsenne

“ He has been going often to the Duchess of Dorset’s. He is such an ultra Radical, you know, and the Dorsets are fierce Tories. Wolfendon says it is a most unwise thing for a good Radical who wants to retain the confidence of the people to be seen about with a Duchess.”
“The Duchess of Dorset,” Mr. Sabin remarked, “must be, well—a middle-aged woman.”
Helene laughed.
“She is sixty if she is a day. But I daresay she herself is not the attraction. There is a very beautiful woman staying with her—the Countess Radantz. A Hungarian, I believe.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ In short, the traveller from Long Marston to Hillborough will scarcely perform the journey under six miles, going by way of Dorsington and Barton, always along crooked roads, and thence through Bidford. Dorsington is an entirely pretty and extremely small village with a church noticeable only for the whimsical smallness of its red-brick Georgian tower. Why, in a lesser-known local rhyme, which does not find celebrity upon postcards and fancy articles at Stratford-on-Avon, Dorsington should be known as “Daft” is more than I can say; unless it be that the facile alliteration is irresistible. ”

“ Here, coming one day to ask for his friend, Fleetwood Sheppard [q. v.] , Lord Dorset found the boy reading Horace, and, after questioning him a little, set him to turn an ode into English. Prior speedily brought it upstairs to Dorset and his friends, so well rendered in verse that it became the fashion with the users of the house to give him passages out of Horace and Ovid to translate. At last, upon one occasion, when Dr. Sprat, the dean of Westminster, and Mr. Knipe, the second master at the school, were both present, Lord Dorset asked the boy whether he would go back to his studies. ”

“ DORSET FOLK-LORE.
MR. HENRY J. MOULE, of Dorchester, has kindly sent me the following "Jottings." I venture to append a few comments thereon, pointing out, for the most part, where parallel superstitions are recorded in the earlier publications of the Society. J. J. Foster.
He says: "We Dorset are not without our odd beliefs and queer tales of past time. But most likely many of both are common to us and other shires. I can but jot down what comes to mind, leaving to others to pick and choose."
"Pigeon feathers should never be used for beds. Folks die hard on them." ”

“ But it is interesting to find that the “Saxons,” to use the familiar term, took a century and a half to master Dorset; our fathers must have made a stubborn fight against endless raids. It is at least possible that the victory of Badon Hill—in which, says the Arthurian legend, the Saxon hordes were ruinously beaten by the “Britons,” led perhaps by a Rome-trained chief—was won in Dorset; Badbury, near Wimborne, in the belief of Edwin Guest of Cambridge, was Badon. But Wessex in due time absorbed Dorset and Dorchester ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are many words bearing no resemblance to English in Dorset speech. What modern Englishman would recognise a “mole hill” in a “wont-heave,” or “cantankerous” in “thirtover”? But too much space would be occupied were this fascinating subject to be pursued further.
National schools, however, are corrupting Wessex speech, and the niceties of Wessex grammar are often neglected by the children. Probably the true Dorset will soon be a thing of the past. William Barnes’ poems and Thomas Hardy’s Wessex novels, especially the latter, will then become invaluable to the philologist. ”

“ In the midst of this homage, Mr Arthur Clennam offered his arm to Little Dorrit, and Little Dorrit took it. ‘Will you go by the Iron Bridge,’ said he, ‘where there is an escape from the noise of the street?’ Little Dorrit answered, if he pleased, and presently ventured to hope that he would ‘not mind’ Mr Cripples’s boys, for she had herself received her education, such as it was, in Mr Cripples’s evening academy. He returned, with the best will in the world, that Mr Cripples’s boys were forgiven out of the bottom of his soul. ”

“ 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 ”

“ After the death of Edward IV. Dorset and his brother Richard Grey were among the supporters of their half-brother, the young king Edward V.; thus they incurred the enmity of Richard duke of Gloucester, afterwards Richard III., and Richard Grey having been arrested, was beheaded at Pontefract in June 1483, while his elder brother, the marquess, saved his life by flight. Dorset was one of the leaders of the duke of Buckingham’s insurrection, and when this failed he joined Henry earl of Richmond in Brittany, but he was left behind in Paris when the future king crossed over to England in 1485. ”

“ It is said that he tore down the walls, but this, almost for certain, was not so; they were too massive to be wrecked without long labour, which the rovers would not care to spend; and there is large evidence for their existence far into the seventeenth century. However, Danish fire and sword must have left the town black and blood-stained within its ramparts. Half a century later, under the Confessor, Dorchester counted 172 houses; the number is recorded in Domesday Book (1085-6) as large, in contrast to the eighty-eight at the date of the survey. ”

“ In the wars between Stephen and Maud, Dorset was often the battle-ground of the rival claimants for the throne. Wareham, unfortunate then, as usual, was taken [Pg 9] and re-taken more than once, first by one party, then by the other; but lack of space prevents the telling of this piece of local history.
King John evidently had a liking for Dorset. He often visited it, having houses of his own at Bere Regis, Canford, Corfe, Cranborne, Gillingham, and Dorchester. In the sixteenth year of his reign he put strong garrisons into Corfe Castle and Wareham as a defence against his discontented barons. ”

“ You have seen for yourself, Dorson, how I can overcome it. There is always a way—always a way.”
Graff had swung around in his chair and was pointing to the lifeless black form in the corner.
Dorson gazed at him, at his extended hand and quivering fingers, at his drawn, bearded face, indescribably malevolent, and with that terrible abnormal gleam and glitter in his frowning eyes, and Dorson felt, with blood chilled and flesh gone cold and clammy, that he was gazing at a madman or a devil incarnate. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Lord Dorset was a great patron of men of letters and merit. Dr. Sprat, bishop of Rochester, celebrated for his polite writings, appealed to him when under a cloud, for the part he acted in the reign of King James II. and by his lordship's interest preserved himself. To him Mr. Dryden dedicated his translation of Juvenal, in which he is very lavish in his lordship's praise, and expresses his gratitude for the bounty he had experienced from him. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Little Dorrit took the packet from the still outstretched hand, and broke the seal. Mrs Clennam then gave her the inner packet that was addressed to herself, and held the other. The shadow of the wall and of the prison buildings, which made the room sombre at noon, made it too dark to read there, with the dusk deepening apace, save in the window. In the window, where a little of the bright summer evening sky could shine upon her, Little Dorrit stood, and read. After a broken exclamation or so of wonder and of terror, she read in silence. ”

“ Lady Dorset naturally wished to remove her daughter Jane from the Admiral’s roof on the death of his wife, but he, knowing that the Duchess of Somerset was bent on marrying the young lady to her eldest son, so worked on the weakness of Lord Dorset, that Jane Grey remained under Lord Seymour’s questionable care. ”

“ Rochester was certainly believed to have been implicated in the unsuccessful intrigue to detach the king from the influence of the queen and the jesuits by means of his mistress, Catharine Sedley, just created Countess of Dorchester (Macauley, ii. 73, note; Diary and Correspondence, ii. 314, note) . The temporary retirement of Lady Dorchester to Ireland, and the resentment of the queen, palpably diminished his influence. ”

“ While the waters of Venice and the ruins of Rome were sunning themselves for the pleasure of the Dorrit family, and were daily being sketched out of all earthly proportion, lineament, and likeness, by travelling pencils innumerable, the firm of Doyce and Clennam hammered away in Bleeding Heart Yard, and the vigorous clink of iron upon iron was heard there through the working hours.
The younger partner had, by this time, brought the business into sound trim; and the elder, left free to follow his own ingenious devices, had done much to enhance the character of the factory. ”

“ What Lord Dorset observed to Edward Howard might have been addressed to almost all his contemporaries—
"As skilful divers to the bottom fall Swifter than those who cannot swim at all; So, in this way of writing without thinking, Thou hast a strange alacrity in sinking."
From this reproach some clever men of the world must be excepted, and among them Dorset himself. Though by no means great poets, or even good versifiers, they always wrote with meaning, and sometimes with wit. ”

“ In 1624 he succeeded to the title of Earl of Dorset, on the death of his brother, who had greatly impoverished the estates by his extravagance. On the accession of Charles I. he received the Order of the Garter, and was named Chamberlain to the Queen’s Majesty. Subsequently Lord Dorset was employed in many important offices, such as Joint-Commissioner, with other noblemen, for the management of Irish affairs, likewise for treating with Holland respecting the marriage of Princess Mary and William of Orange. ”

“ The Dorset poems are eclogues, wholly free from the artificiality which commonly mars compositions of that class; they are clear, simple, rapid and natural. There is no affectation of profound thought, and no straining after passion, but a wholly unaffected love for the country and all that lives and grows there. The vital importance of language to poetry is nowhere more clearly seen than in Barnes, for all the spirit of the Dorset poems evaporates, and all the colour fades from the specimens the poet was induced to publish in literary English. ”

“ Although Dorset has a host of literary associations other than those furnished by the Wessex novels, and notwithstanding that William Barnes sang of its charms to deaf ears as sweetly as ever Burns piped of the North Country, it was left to Thomas Hardy to reveal Dorset to those who knew it not; although he was writing for a great many years before his novels began to draw people to the land of Gabriel Oak, Tess, and Ethelberta. ”

“ This entrance to Dorsetshire is not so favourable an one as that, for example, from Somerset, by Templecombe and Stalbridge or Sherborne, where Dorset is indeed like unto the Land of Promise, a land flowing with milk and honey, where herds of cattle low musically in mead or byre, and the earth is alluvial—rich, deep, and sticky.
Here is the more arid, elevated country of open down; chalky, and producing only coarse grass, pine-trees, bracken, and furze—a sheep-grazing, as opposed to a cattle-rearing, district. ”