The Girl I Left Behind Me

The Girl I Left Behind Me is the march heard as the Eleventh Dragoon Guards depart Casterbridge. In the report of their passing, the tune becomes more than a military detail: it is the sound around which the villagers construct an explanation for Fanny Robin’s disappearance, although that explanation remains uncertain.

The Tune and the Regiment

William Smallbury reports that the Eleventh Dragoon Guards have left Casterbridge for Melchester and onward, replaced by new troops. Their route, he says, arrived from the government unexpectedly, and the regiment was already on the march before its departure was fully anticipated. As the soldiers went down the street, they played The Girl I Left Behind Me.

The song accompanies a public spectacle. William recalls the regiment’s “glorious notes of triumph” and the great drum’s blows, which he says shook the onlookers inwardly. His account mingles martial grandeur with the bustle of a town crowd, including public-house patrons and unnamed women. The title’s language of departure lends the scene a poignant resonance, but the evidence identifies it specifically as the tune played by the departing soldiers rather than establishing any particular lyric or performance beyond that report.

Fanny Robin’s Reported Departure

The march matters because William connects the regiment’s movement to Fanny Robin. At the barracks he learns that the Eleventh has gone, and reasons that Fanny, whose young man belonged to the regiment, must have followed him. He presents this as his conclusion, not as confirmed knowledge: the soldiers’ departure is reported, while Fanny’s whereabouts and purpose remain unresolved in the conversation.

Bathsheba Everdene receives the news cautiously. She says they are unlikely to learn more that night and asks that Boldwood be told what William has discovered. Gabriel Oak, who had watched the regiment pass, listens with interest but remains doubtful. Thus the tune’s apparent triumph stands beside uncertainty: the regiment has moved on, but whether Fanny has gone after her lover is still only a village inference.