St. Michael's Church, Stinsford, Nr Dorchester
DT2
9QP St. Michael's Church, Stinsford, Nr Dorchester
DT2
9QP Afternoon Service in Mellstock
by Thomas Hardy (Circa 1850)
On afternoons of drowsy calm
We stood in the panelled pew,
Singing one-voiced a Tate-and-Brady psalm
To the tune of 'Cambridge New'.
We watched the elms, we watched the rooks,
The clouds upon the breeze,
Between the whiles of glancing at our books,
And swaying like the trees.
So mindless were those outpourings!
Though I am not aware
That I have gained by subtle thought on things
Since we stood psalming there.
| Photographs of Hardy's grave. |
Above - Photograph without flash
Above - Photograph using flash
Some associated websites:
Dorset Historic Churches Trust
Dr Douglas A Strachan (1875-1950) designed this Thomas Hardy memorial stained glass window in1930. It was unveiled by Lady Ilchester. Originally Florence was due to unveil the window but fearful of bad publicity after the publication of Somerset Maugham's "Cake and Ale" published in the September of 1930. In it portrais a young secound wife of a famous author who did very well out of his death. Florence felt that the book was directed at them (the Hardy's) although Maugham always denied the facts.
Set in the south aisle it displays Thomas Hardy's favorite Old Testament story (I Kings, chapter 19 of which Hardy refers to in the poem "Quid Hic Agis?") in which Elijah, robed in purple, listens to the still small voice after the tumult of wind, earthquake, and fire.
11 - And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake:
12 - And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.
13 - And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entering in of the cave. And, behold, there came a voice unto him, and said, What doest thou here, Elijah?
I
When I weekly knew
An ancient pew,
And murmured there
The forms of prayer
And thanks and praise
In the ancient ways,
And heard read out
During August drought
That chapter from Kings
Harvest-time brings;
How the prophet, broken
By griefs unspoken,
Went heavily away
To fast and to pray,
And, while waiting to die,
The Lord passed by,
And a whirlwind and fire
Drew nigher and nigher,
And a small voice anon
Bade him up and be gone, -
I did not apprehend
As I sat to the end
And watched for her smile
Across the sunned aisle,
That this tale of a seer
Which came once a year
Might, when sands were heaping,
Be like a sweat creeping,
Or in any degree
Bear on her or on me!
II
When later, by chance
Of circumstance,
It befel me to read
On a hot afternoon
At the lectern there
The selfsame words
As the lesson decreed,
To the gathered few
From the hamlets near -
Folk of flocks and herds
Sitting half aswoon,
Who listened thereto
As women and men
Not overmuch
Concerned at such -
So, like them then,
I did not see
What drought might be
With me, with her,
As the Kalendar
Moved on, and Time
Devoured our prime.
III
But now, at last,
When our glory has passed,
And there is no smile
From her in the aisle,
But where it once shone
A marble, men say,
With her name thereon
Is discerned to-day;
And spiritless
In the wilderness
I shrink from sight
And desire the night,
(Though, as in old wise,
I might still arise,
Go forth, and stand
And prophesy in the land),
I feel the shake
Of wind and earthquake,
And consuming fire
Nigher and nigher,
And the voice catch clear,
"What doest thou here?"
This was Thomas Hardy's parish church. Stinsford together with the Higher
and Lower Bockhamptons, constitutes the village of "Mellstock" in
Hardy's Wessex. His father
and grandfather came here every Sunday for most of the first forty years
of the 19th Century to worship and play their viols and violas (violin and
cello) as part of the church choir. Hardy knew the church through his boyhood
and because of its association with his family and within his formative years
he came to regard it as 'the most hallowed spot' in the country. In 1855,
at age fifteen, Hardy began teaching at Stinsford Church Sunday School.
Whilst living at Max Gate he frequently walked
across the valley of the river Frome to visit the place that meant so much
to him. His first wife Emma was buried here
in the graveyard and on his own death in 1928 his heart was buried in her
grave, simultaneously, his ashes, after his cremation at Woking, were
interred in Poets'
Corner, Westminster Abbey, London. next to those of Charles Dickens. (it
is often said that the surgeons cat ate the Thomas's heart and that it had
to be substituted with another). His pall-bearers were J.M. Barrie, George
Bernard Shaw, John Galsworthy, Rudyard Kipling, A.E. Houseman, Stanley Baldwin
and Ramsay MacDonald. (when Hardy died T.E. Lawrence
was unable to be one of his pall-bearers as he was then in Karachi.). Thomas
Hardy wished for a Stinsford burial and had discussed it with the vicar. Rev
H.G.B. Cowley. Not that it was a reversion to religion from one who had called
God "that vast imbecility". The village churchyard was necessary
for Hardy's sense of history and family. "I shall sleep quite calmly
at Stinsford, whatever happens," he had written. Others thought differently.
Sydney Cockerell and Sir James Barrie intervened with the Dean of Westminster
to arrange an Abbey funeral. The Hardy family were enraged, with cousin Theresa
telling reporters: "I am grieved that they are going to take poor Tom
away to London. He wanted, I know, to lie with his own folk in the churchyard
yonder." It was Cowley, the Stinsford vicar, who suggested what Robert
Gittmgs calls "a gruesome though historic compromise". The heart
was to be cut out, to go to Stinsford, and the body would be cremated at Woking,
on 14 January 1928, with the ashes being taken to Westminster Abbey, for burial
the following day in Poets' Corner. This solution ignored the weight of popular
superstition, firmly rooted in the peasant stock of Hardy's family, that a
body should be buried intact. Kate Hardy found it "another staggering
blow", and Edward Codd called it "repellent". The pubs of Dorchester
relished the whole bizarre concept, with jokes ranging from one about a cat
jumping on to the mortuary slab and eating the freshly removed heart, to problems
at the resurrection: "Almighty, he'll say, 'Ere be the 'eart, but where
be the rest of 'ee?'" The Abbey service, Robert Gittings writes in The
Older Hardy, was organised by Macmillans and became a shambles, with a "chaos
of wrong invitations and uninvited gate-crashers, 'a sick horror' for years
to Florence". Neither did the weather help. "Before the service
was due to start the colour overhead had deepened to a brown such as London
often suffers on dull days," The Times reported. It was not quite what
Hardy had expected: "And mourn the yellowing tree: for I shall mind not,
slumbering peacefully". Terry Coleman raised the point in an interview
with Betjeman for The Guardian- "At the time he wrote that, the last
three were alive, and nor are they buried there now. He says the names were
put in out of euphony, not malice But Mellstock is really Stinsford, where
Hardy's heart is buried. The grave rests alongside that of his father and
mother and other members of the Hardy family. In 1937 his second wife, Florence,
was also buried here. His second novel "Under The Greenwood Tree"
(1872) has as its setting the village of Mellstock, his fictional name for
Stinsford. The church features largely in the action of the story which makes
use of many memories of the past learnt from his parents. He wrote many poems
about the church and its choir including "Afternoon Service at Mellstock".
The Mellstock church from 'Under the Greenwood Tree' and ' Tess of the D'Urbervilles
St Michael’s Church, Stinsford, (in the diocese of Salisbury (Hardy' Melchester)) is set near Kingston-Maurward, some five miles east of Dorchester. St Michael church is small and homely and dates from the 13th to the 17th century, the tower being 14th century, the church has had several Victorian restorations. A late Saxon carving of St Michael with outstretched wings is re-set on the outside of tower, probably during the restoration work. The wooden gallery where the musicians and singers of the village choir or band sat has been removed. Hardy’s plan of the gallery is on display. The Norman font was restored in 1920. Thomas Hardy is not the only poet with associations with Stinsford Church as Cecil Day Lewis 1904 -1972, the Poet Laureate (1967 - 1972), is also buried here. He was a great admirer of Thomas Hardy and had arranged that he should be buried as close as possible to the author's grave in Stinsford churchyard.
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