In 1924 Hardy himself wrote the script for the first British theatrical adaptation and chose Gertrude Bugler, a Dorchester girl from the original Hardy Players, to play Tess. The Hardy Players (re-formed in 2005) was an amateur group from Dorchester which re-enacted Hardy's novels. Bugler was highly acclaimed, but prevented from taking the London stage part by Hardy's wife, Florence, who was jealous of her; Hardy had said that young Gertrude was the true incarnation of the Tess he had imagined. Years before writing the novel, Hardy had been inspired by the beauty of her mother Augusta Way, then an 18-year-old milkmaid, when he visited Augusta's father's farm in Bockhampton. When Hardy saw Bugler (he rehearsed The Hardy Players at the hotel run by her parents), he immediately recognised her as the young image of the now older Augusta.