The Popes of Wessex - Thomas Hardy writes...

Following the title page, the book bore an inscription:

“If you do not place something of your family history on record it is sometimes invented for you, and it generally does you less justice than you would do yourself.”

These were the days before the mass interest in the family histories of non-aristocratic or royal personages, before Who Do You Think You Are and Ancestry.co.uk and searchable online census returns.  Many families, mine included, did not consider their lives worthy of documenting; something I have noticed even to this day, in my interviews of inspirational veterans of the Second World War who lived through remarkable times.

The book's foreword was written by poet and author Thomas Hardy, the name many people associate with Dorset and a family friend of the Popes. For me as a cultural historian, the final sentence reaffirms my passion for uncovering, discovering and publicising the stories of individuals in the extraordinary circumstances which twentieth-century warfare brought about.

The sturdy Dorset family of the Popes, a section of which has been grouped together for memorizing in the following volume, needs no apology for a modest appearance in a privately printed record based upon the varied achievements of one household, so to speak, in the present war – a household which has been for many years among my nearest neighbours.

Upon the family names it is not necessary to dilate.  It has been known hereabouts – in Stalbridge, Marnhull, Corscombe, the Tollers and, late, Chilfrome – for centuries; and it may be mentioned that when John White went from Dorchester, England, to found Dorchester, Mass, U.S.A., he took with him some Dorchester Popes, whose descendants are now noteworthy people of Massachusetts.  That research might be able to trace consanguinity between the Dorset Popes and the poet Alexander has often been a conjecture of the present writer, based purely on the poet’s interest in at least one corner of the county – Sherborne and its vicinity – of which, as is well known, he gives a long description in a letter to Miss Blount.

The circumstances of the great conflict which, we many at least hope, is hastening to a close, differ so largely from those of the previous wars of this country, that it is impossible to infer how many, or even if any more than had already done so, of the eleven brethren here marshalled would have deliberately chosen a military or naval career in ordinary conditions.  Yet to read over their actions at this point of time conveys a fancy that they would all have fallen into line naturally:

Though war nor no known quarrel were in question;
                                                            …assembled and collected
As were a war in expectation.

However that may be, these chronicles, even when they become musty with age, may be interesting not only to descendants of the family but to others who are not of their blood or name.  It often has happened that an account of what befell particular individuals in unusual circumstances has conveyed a more vivid picture of those circumstances than a comprehensive view of them has been able to raise.

                                                                                                                                                      T.H.

September 1918