Thomas Hardy's Dorset

by R. Thurston Hopkins

It was at this vault stone that Tess bent down and said:

"Why am I on the wrong side of this door!" Perhaps it is as well to recite the outline of Hardy's story of Tess at this stage of our pilgrimage. Tess Durbeyfield, the daughter of poor and feeble-minded parents and descendant of a noble but somewhat wild old family, was forcibly seduced by a wealthy young loafer whose father had taken, with no right to it, Tess's proper name of "D'Urberville." A child was born, but died. Some years after Tess became betrothed to a clergyman's son, Angel Clare. On their wedding night Tess confessed to him her past relations with Alec D'Urberville, and thereupon Clare, a man who was not without sin himself, left her. In the end Fate conspired to force Tess back into the protection of Alec. Clare, who cannot be looked upon as anything but half-baked and insincere, returns repentant from Canada and finds her living with D'Urberville. In order to be free to return to Clare, Tess stabbed Alec to the heart, for which she was arrested, tried and hanged.

In this romance Bere Regis figures as "Kingsbere," and the church is the subject of many references. It was on one of the "canopied, altar-shaped" Turberville tombs that poor Tess noticed, with a sudden qualm of blank fear, that the effigy moved. "As soon as she drew close to it she discovered all in a moment that the figure was a living person; and the shock to her sense of not having been alone was so violent that she almost fainted, not, however, till she had recognised Alec D'Urberville in the form."

Here Alec D'Urberville stamped with his heel heavily above the stones of the ancient family vault, whereupon there arose a hollow echo from below, and remarked airily to Tess: "A family gathering is it not, with these old fellows under us here?"

In the south wall a doorway which has been long filled in can still be traced. There is nothing of special note in this alteration, but a legend has been handed down which is worth recording here. It is said that one of the Turberville family quarrelled with the vicar of Bere Regis and ended a stormy meeting by declaring that he would never again pass through the old door of the church. As time went on the lure of the Turberville dead in the ancient shrine obsessed him and he grew to regret the haste in which he had cut himself off from the ancient possessors of his land. After some years Fate arranged a chance meeting between the vicar and Turberville at a village feast, and under the influence of the general good-fellowship and merry-making they buried the hatchet and fell to discussing old times and friends. When time came for the breaking up of the entertainment it was only Turberville's dogged determination to keep his vow which prevented a return to the old happy conditions before the breach of friendship.

"There is one thing I would ask you to do, Vicar," said Turberville as he parted. "When you attend vespers to-morrow just tell the old Turberville squires to sleep soundly in their vault. Although I have vowed never to pass through the church door while I am alive, I cannot stop 'em carrying me through when I am dead—so I shall sleep with them in the end."

However, the worthy vicar went to the town stone-mason next morning and arranged to cut a new doorway in the south wall, and thus it came to pass that the independent and stubborn Turberville once again was able to worship with the shades of his fathers and yet keep to his promise never to pass through the old door again.

The first of the family of Turberville was Sir Payne de Turberville (de Turba Villa), who came over with William the Norman. From Sir Payne down to the last descendants of the family who form the theme of Thomas Hardy's romance, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, the Turbervilles were a strange, wild company. It is excusable, too, in a way, for it appears that the first of the line, after the battle of Hastings, was one of the twelve knights who helped Robert FitzHamon, Lord of Estremaville, in his evil work and returned to England when his commander was created Earl of Gloucester. In an ancient document of the time of Henry III. we come across a striking illustration of the unscrupulous ways of this family, for it is recorded that John de Turberville was then paying an annual fine on some land near Bere Regis, which his people before him had filched from the estate of the Earl of Hereford. The Turbervilles were established in the neighbourhood in 1297. Bryants Puddle, a very rude little hamlet situated on the River Piddle a little to the south-west of Bere, receives its title from Brian de Turberville, who was lord of the manor in the reign of Edward III. The village was anciently called "Piddle Turberville," but this name has been replaced by Bryants Puddle.

At a later period the Turbervilles came into the possession of the manor of Bere Regis at the breaking up of Tarent Abbey, and at this time the good fortune of the family was at its zenith. But with the spoils of the church came a gradual and general downfall of the old family, and with the increased riches, we may conjecture, the Turbervilles went roaring on their way more riotously than ever. There is an entry in the parish registers of Bere, under the year 1710, of the interment of Thomas Turberville, the last of the ancient race. An intermediate stage of the house is represented by D'Albigny Turberville, the oculist mentioned by Pepys, who died in 1696 and was buried in Salisbury Cathedral. After the year 1710 the old manor-house of the Turbervilles, standing near the church, was strangely silent. Their time was over and gone, the wine had been drunk, the singers had departed. But the stories of their carousals and great deeds were still a matter for dispute and discussion at the village inn, and the eerie old house was especially regarded with feelings of awe and few cared to go near it after dark. It was not what they had seen, but what they might see, that caused them to shun the old place. I can picture the Dorset rustic of that time (and the distance between Hodge the "Goodman" of 1710 and Hodge the driver of the motor tractor is almost nothing at all) shaking his head on being asked his reasons for avoiding the house, and saying, with a grin, as how he "shouldn't like to go poking about such a divered [dead] old hole."

The ancient manor-house was allowed to lapse into ruin, and now nothing at all remains but a few crumbling stones: