APPOENAS TARDUS DEUS HUNC SALVANS
TUEATUR
The Abbey is in a wood by the river—a gloomy, fearsome, dark place. This is the Wellbridge Abbey of Hardy's Tess, and we read that "against the north wall of the ruined choir was the empty stone coffin of an abbot, in which every tourist with a turn for grim humour was accustomed to stretch himself." This is, of course, the lidless coffin in which Angel Clare, walking in his sleep, laid Tess. Woolbridge House is not so near to this spot as Thomas Hardy gives one to understand in the novel. Near the ruin is the old mill of Bindon Abbey, situated on the Frome, where Angel Clare proposed to learn milling. It is called "Wellbridge Mill" in Tess.
The old Abbey wood is full of shadows and is the kind of place that one would write down as immemorially old, barren and sinister. The singular impressiveness of its ivy-grown walls, shadowed by heavy masses of foliage, depresses one dreadfully. The straight footpaths beneath the trees have been worn into deep tracks by the attrition of feet for many centuries. Under the trees are the fish-ponds which played such an important part in provisioning the monks' larder. They are so concealed from the daylight that they take on a shining jet-black surface. A book might be written about the place—a book of terrible and fateful ghost tales.
CHAPTER VIII ROUND AND ABOUT WEYMOUTH
I walk in the world's great highways,
In the dusty glare and riot,
But my heart is in the byways