Classics Retold

Budmouth is the fictional name. Thomas Hardy gave to Weymouth, a seaside town in Dorset, southern England.  Hardy's Wessex is a semi fictional version of southwest England where real places are given literary alter-egos.  The connection is so strong that the local secondary school is named Budmouth Academy after Hardy's fictional town.  In the Trumpet Major Hardy uses the name Budmouth Regis to reflect Weymouth's history as a favourite holiday spot for King George III.  The description of Budmouth's seaside features --- like Esplanade, the harbour dividing the town, and the view of Isle of Portland (Isle of Slingers) align exactly with Weymouth.  Budmouth races in Far From The Madding Crowd were inspired by the real horse races held at Lodmoor, just outside Weymouth. 

In most contexts bought discharge means discharge by purchase. It is a practice where a soldier pays a fee to be legally released from a contract or service before their agreed term is over.  While the term is primarily historical, it is still used in certain specific modern or legal contexts.  In military service buying your discharge colloquially means paying a fine to leave military service. This right is suspended during war time.  Buying discharge was a corner stone of how professional military, particularly British Army managed their manpower and society heirarchy.  They were separate for ordinary soldier and for officers. For enlisted men, discharge by purchase was often the only legal way to leave the service before their long term contract. It was a safety valve to recruits who later realise that they were not suited for military life.  In the absence of it they should desert or self-mutilate to get a discharge on medical ground. In mid 19th century Off...

It was now five o'clock in the morning.  The dawn was breaking.in brownish-grey. The air was cool, a light gentle breeze caressed Oak's face. In ten minutes the breeze was gone and wind roamed at large.  Some of the thatching on the wheat-stacks whirled aloft, and had to be replaced and weighted with rails that lay at hand.  This done Oak went towards barley.  A huge drop of rain hit his face; fierce wind howled round every corner, the trees rocked to the bases of their trunks, and the twigs clashed in strife.  Driving in spars at any point and on any system he covered more and more safely from ruin the seven fifty pounds of barley.  The rain was getting heavy, and Oak soon felt the water to be tracking cold and clammy routes down his back.  After finishing the job he slided down and stood at the foot of the ladder, fully soaked in rain.  Picture of his fighting in the fire at the same spot, eight months ago, came to his memory. Fight against the ...

John Flaxman was an English sculptor and draughtsman. His father also named John, was well known as a moulder and seller of plaster casts based in London. John Flaxman was the second son of John, the moulder by his first wife Lee. He was a sickly child, high shouldered, with a head too large for his body. His mother died when he was nine, and his father married another woman. He had little schooling and was largely self educated from his father's stock-in-trade. He studied classical literature in an effort to understand them. His father's customers helped him with translations of classical literature, advice and later with commissions of job.  Prominent among them were George Romeny, an English painter, Anthony Stephen Mathew, a clergy man and his wife Harriet, in whose house John Flaxman used to meet the best blue stocking society of the day. Here artists William Blake and Thomas Stothard became his close friends.  John Flaxman, while living in Rome, was commissioned by Georg...

A light flapped over the scene, as if reflected from  phosphorescent wings crossing the sky, and a rumble filled the sky. It was the first arrow  from the approaching storm and it fell wide.  The second peal was noisy, with comparatively little visible lightning.  Gabriel saw a candle shining in Bathsheba's bedroom, and soon a shadow moved to and from upon the blind.  A third flash came.  The lightning was of silver colour and gleamed in the sky intermittently.  Rumbles became rattles.  Gabriel from his elevated position could see over the landscape for a vast distance.  Every hedge, bush, and tree was visible.  In a paddock in the same direction was a herd of heifers, and these were galloping in the wild way, flinging their heels and tails.  Then the picture vanished leaving Gabriel in intense darkness. He had stuck his ricking rod, groom or  poinard  as it was indifferently called--- a long iron lance, sharp at the extr...

A wind vane.  A device often shaped like an arrow or rooster used to indicate the direction of wind, typically found on rooftop. It is a thin curved or flat object, such as a blade, plate, or sail that rotates around an axis driven by, or directing a flow of fluid like air or water.  The word originated from Old English fana meaning flag or banner.