EXCURSIONS TO SANDRINGHAM
I had a day of days before I left H----.
It was the 17th August, and the weather the very best that England could
do. Roses were still plentiful in the beautifully kept English
gardens--Dorothy Perkins painted herself on the landscape far and
near--and mauve and purple clematis foamed over tawny house walls in
delicious contrast of colour, with as little reserve as in our more
ardently wooing air. A favourite ribbon-work of the little dark blue
campanula was noticeable everywhere, bordering flower-beds and
window-boxes; it was as positive as the blue pencil-marks of the Customs
on my travelling baggage, and these oddly remind me of it. Withal a hint
of autumn, gentle and gracious, mellowed the summer scene--a _red_
rowan-tree in one fine country garden; that splendid burning-bush, the
Virginian sumach, in another; above all--the sweetest "note" to me--the
little wild, incomparable harebell, the English harebell, thick in the
grass of the roadsides. And the corn was ripe and ready, the hand-cut
lane cleared for the reaping-machine around nearly all the fields.
Well, on this perfect morning Mrs B. escorted me to the livery stables
where her pony was boarded out. A more notable fact in connection with
them was that the elderly proprietor was once the young son of an
elderly proprietor of stables in old H----, whence we derived the
donkeys and the donkey chaises of bygone times. She took me to see him
on the very day of my arrival, that we might indulge in mutual
reminiscences of the Golden Age. Now he had a great establishment, many
horses and fine carriages glittering in their modern elegance, and his
sons in their turn were the acting directors of the business--smart men
in well-cut riding breeches, to whom a donkey would be as amusing a
little animal as it is to me.
Amongst the many excellent vehicles of the firm, to which satin-skinned
teams were being harnessed, a large brake was out for an excursion to a
famous show place of the county. I was going with it, and going "on my
own," Mrs B.'s back not being strong enough for the expedition. Usually
I do not enjoy what we call pleasures all alone by myself, but for once
I was able to make a happy day without the aid of a companion.
The seat of honour beside the coachman was reserved for me. He sat high
in the air on his folded overcoat, and, becushioned and berugged, with a
stool for my feet, I snuggled under his elbow, comfort personified. A
fine man he was, with a fine old weather-toughened English face, and he
was a fine whip; I knew it as soon as I saw him gather his four-in-hand
together, and an Australian bushwoman of my experience is a fair judge.
He was not a garrulous person, but ready with his information when I
wanted it, and I could not have wished for a more congenial Jehu. He
confided to me his opinion of the motor that was "bouncing us off the
road," his mournful view of a future when the horse should be no more.
It occurred to me that the next generation will find C.'s livery stables
dealing only with motors and chauffeurs, and Mr H. had the air of a man
who would hope to be in his grave before he could see it. Certainly
there was much need of the horn that brayed a notice of our coming at
the approach of every turning. English roads and village streets are so
narrow that at times our great drag seemed to fill them from side to
side; only an experience of London traffic enabled me to believe it
possible that another vehicle could pass us; and the corners were so
masked by the hedges that one could not see around them. Mrs B. and I,
trundling about in her pony-carriage of a morning, had many sudden
encounters with goggle-eyed drivers who did not trouble to toot a
warning that they were near. Fortunately, her high-born pony treated the
mushroom automobile with contempt.
But, oh, those English roads! And the joy of that twelve-mile drive
behind that spanking team! We passed over the route by which our
stage-coach of old brought us to and from old H---- before the railroad
from L---- was made, and I could lean back in my comfortable seat and
dream of the dear Past to my heart's content. Mr H., while keeping me
conscious that I was in his good care, only spoke when he was spoken to;
on the other side of me were a lady and her daughter, who confined their
low-voiced conversation to themselves. There may have been, in the seats
behind, a dozen persons more, who did not in the least disturb me.
We threaded five lovely villages, with much horn-blowing and twisting
and turning, before we came to royal Sandringham, which I had already
seen, but not on this side of it; every house and church and garden and
green and pond and tree was a picture, to raise in my mind the unceasing
question: "Why did I never know that England was like this?" I had not
forgotten, I had simply never known it. No English person can ever know
it so long as he stays at home. The callousness of the native, who was
used to it, to the beauty of his dwelling-place, the value of his
privileges, was a continual surprise to me, although I knew the reason
for it. To be as the King at Sandringham, without the suggestion of an
unfinished or imperfect detail in the whole scheme of one's domestic
life, would be to have too oppressively much of a good thing, but I felt
as if I would give my ears to live in one of his tenants' cottages.
By the way, even royal Sandringham had its message from the Past for me.
I had known the place in childhood, and had my memories of the family
from whom it was acquired; but I had always understood that Edward VII.
had "rebuilt" the old mansion, which implied that he had first pulled it
down. Instead of that, I found it had been built on to, which is quite a
different thing. There it was, at the end of the immensely long facade,
and, to my thinking, the most beautiful although the least ornate part
of it. The photographers are not of the same opinion, for, having so
much to get into a picture, they cut off what they consider can be
spared at that end, never at the other; so it was a complete surprise to
me to find the old house standing, and I had great difficulty in getting
a photograph of the royal residence which took it in. But I did not
cease from the search until I found one.
Lest I should seem to be sailing under false colours as a royal guest or
otherwise privileged person, let me explain that I paid my visit to
Sandringham as a cheap tripper on the occasion of the Cottage Flower
Show of the estate. This was the day of the year--and in that favoured
summer it was a day of unsurpassable weather, the 22nd of July--when the
most generous of kings permitted any number of his humble subjects to
overrun his domain right up to the house walls. The blinds were
down--that was all, and the very least that could be done, in the way of
decent reserve--but there was nothing save one's own sense of propriety
to prevent one from flattening ones nose against the window-glass and
trying to see around the edges. Policemen were there, of course,
quantities of them, I daresay; but they drifted about as if they had no
interest in the proceedings except to render themselves as inconspicuous
as possible. Never once did I find one exercising his profession, and it
was evident that they had their orders not to do so, except in the last
extremity. Surely if anybody knew how to do the graceful thing
gracefully, it was that consummate gentleman, Edward VII. And the
miscellaneous crowd to whose honour he trusted justified his courtesy
and confidence in them; they strolled about, free and easy, as if the
place belonged to them, but not the smallest unauthorised liberty was
taken with it, that I could see.
It was very striking, the sort of tribal, patriarchal sentiment, the
almost family feeling, prevailing all over this estate and as far as the
royal landlord's influence as such extended. Here the man behind the
monarch was known as probably he could not be elsewhere in his own
dominions or in the world--here, where he was in the special sense at
home, and where he could be himself in freedom. Behind his back it was
easy to gather the facts of the situation. There was no servile,
old-world awe in the enormous and adoring respect paid to their great
squire by those who "lived under" him; in their evidently boundless
affection there was not a scrap of fear. When the milk gave out in the
refreshment tents, because the fine day had brought more tea-drinkers
than were expected, messengers ran to the Queen's dairy, as naturally as
they would have run home if home had been as near, for more; and the
little incident was typical. As a cheap tripper I gained an interesting
experience and some valuable knowledge which as a privileged guest I
must have missed. Also--in the retrospect--a delightful memory.
At the time, there was a disadvantage attached to the position which
almost spoiled my day. The excursion train started early in the morning
and returned late in the evening, giving us the whole day "out," and I
was not strong enough to stand all that. I knew just how it would be,
but I had not seen the time-table when I committed myself to the
expedition by inviting a niece-in-law to accompany me. Otherwise I
should not have come. And so now I am very thankful that I did invite
her. As I said to her, when I tumbled, half dead, out of the train at
D---- (cutting off what I could of the return journey, half of which she
had still to make), "I'm glad I've done it--now that it is over."
It was all right, the getting there. The drive from Wolferton Station
was full of joy, the beautiful modern woodland road not withholding
glimpses of the wild heath of my young days, that was wild heath still,
splashed with pinky-purple heather delightfully blending with dark fir
wood and tawny sand. The tented meadows, and the sweet gardens beyond
them, the views of the great house from this side and that, the glorious
trees, the glorious grass, the glorious sunshine which Australia could
not beat--as long as I escaped with my life to tell the tale--or,
rather, to remember the feast of loveliness that it was--it is absurd to
talk of what it cost me.
I do not grudge anything. I did not then; at any rate I knew I was not
going to. But the fact remains that by one o'clock (with no train till
after seven) I was dead beat.
For the sake of my young companion I "stuck it out" as long as possible.
We went to a restaurant tent and had a good lunch. That put into me a
certain amount of spurious vitality, sufficient to carry me along for
half-an-hour more. Then I sat on a bench in front of the house, while
she flitted up and down terrace steps and explored nooks and corners, my
eye of the chaperon keeping her in sight. Then I made a great effort and
we went to the Flower Show proper. I dragged myself up and down the
fragrant alley-ways and looked at everything, and made appreciative
remarks to the exhibitors, who, I am able to testify, did themselves and
the estate credit. Then the heat and crush in the tents overpowered me
and I had to get outside in haste.
Sinking upon a bench in the grateful air I said to my niece: "My dear,
do you happen to see amongst all these people anyone you know?" She did.
Almost as I spoke she spied a friend. It was a man alone, but
fortunately an elderly man, yet not too old to be agreeable to her;
married, the father of a family, a connection of her own by marriage;
quite safe. So I turned her over to him that she might continue to enjoy
herself, and they seemed both obliged to me. "Meet me at the church at
four," said I (there was to be an organ recital at that hour).
"Meanwhile I will just sit and rest."
And here--if I may be forgiven by my gracious host for mentioning it--I
seemed to find out one little weak spot in his scheme of perfection.
There were seats in plenty scattered over the broad acres of lawn. They
were built around the trunks of many of the splendid trees, and they
were excellently made of gnarled and twisted wood, and they were
sylvanly picturesque; but I cannot allow that they were quite
"right"--what one may term legitimately artistic. Because the essential
principle of true art is that a thing shall be frankly what it professes
to be, and these pretty rustic benches professed to be resting-places,
and there was no rest in them. I tried one after another, until I must
have gone the round of them all, in search of a niche for my tired back
where a hard elbow would not poke into it, and there simply wasn't one.
I could not afford to be thought too intoxicated to sit or stand, or I
must have slipped down and laid my manifold aches upon the soft grass;
so in despair I crawled to the church, where the seats, however hard,
would not be knobby; and there for an hour or two, before it was crowded
to suffocation for the organ recital, I sat by the open door to endure
my fatigue. As I was never so long without the relief of a recumbent or
reclining attitude since a carriage accident in 1877, when I was young
and comparatively strong, gave me a permanent weak back, I was never so
painfully tired in all my life. When the organ recital was over I made
for the road where the vehicles were assembling for train time--still a
long way off--and chartered a comfortable old landau, not only to take
us to the station, but for use as a sofa in the meantime. I climbed in,
leaned back luxuriously, put up my feet, and was in terrestrial heaven.
It was hard to make my coachman believe that, far from being in a hurry
to start, I wanted to stay where I was to the last moment, and he was
too zealous in spite of me; but for an hour I reposed happily, and could
have done so for two or three more, watching the break-up of the
festival--the exhibitors stacking their country carts, carrying off
their loaded baskets, exchanging their felicitations before they
scattered for their homes. Physically I enjoyed myself more than I had
done all day.
But now I take no count of cost. I congratulate myself that I was forced
to pay it. May I be a cheap tripper and go through it all again, if I
can make the same profit in material for the imagination. As I write, my
mind is suffused with the golden beauty of that day. It basks again in
such English sunshine as an old Australian could not credit without
seeing it; it revels in those summer woods, with their peeps of purple
heathland, their pheasants tranquilly meandering in and out amongst the
rhododendrons. In those miles of shaven lawn, like a continuous carpet,
with their ornamentation of single trees and clumps, their dells and
rockeries and lake and pretty nooks, all so flawless; in the delightful
garden beds and bowers, that are still so simply English, flowering
hardily in the open air; in the various aspects of the richly featured
house, which is yet no more than an English country house, as
comfort-breathing, cheerful and homely as one's own. The little
headstone (to a dog) under the windows; the pergola in the kitchen
garden; York Cottage on its sunny slope; the charming rectory, its
French windows open to the view of its ideal surroundings; the baby's
grave in mother earth under the wall of the family church, the pathetic
family memorials within--above all, that plate let into one end of the
family pew, which I could not bear to see anyone look at who was not a
"mother dear," bereaved of her grown son, like me--each and all are the
picture gallery of Memory, that blessed haunt of the soul in the aging
years. And not so much as a sketch-book scrawl of a weary woman seeking
rest on knobbly rustic seats in vain.
However, in this chapter I set out to tell the tale of another
adventure. And now it was August, and I was several-weeks-of-England
stronger than I had been that day at Sandringham. And all I saw of the
royal seat I saw from the public road--and I think we went over a part
of the new road that a month earlier had been a-making--the road
necessitated by the destruction of the famous avenue in a gale, the
removal of the screen of trees leaving the house too much exposed to the
passer-by along the original highway. The King had been obliged to set
his boundaries further out to preserve his privacy, and he had taken in
the old road; at that time he was building miles of wall outside of it,
and the Norwich gates were in pieces on the ground; by this time they
will be set in the new wall, and another landmark of the old times be
gone. It was the best that he could do, since even a king cannot set a
fallen avenue up again. Workmen were very busy round about, and it was
odd to see the King's name, like that of any other Norfolk farmer, on
the drays and carts that carried material to and fro. He was "running
down" frequently, we learned, to inspect the works, as well as some
improvements going on in the off-season at the house itself, like any
other domestic person whose heart is in his home.
As we passed the raw opening which displayed the royal residence in its
temporary nakedness, Mr H. checked his horses to give his excursionists
a view; it was one of the advertised features of the trip. Then we swept
on through the remainder of the lovely villages--Dersingham, Wolferton
(it is no use pretending to maintain anonymity here, since the mention
of Sandringham, for which a mere "S----" would not serve, gives me
away)--to the Black Horse Inn at Castle Rising, which was the goal of
our journey so far as he was concerned.
I remembered the Black Horse, as I remembered the great castle--eagerly
looked for on each of those stage-coach drives of the fifties--and I
felt glad that I had no companion when I set out to explore the latter
for absolutely the first time. "Oh, if we could only go _close_ to it!
Oh, if we could only go _into_ it!" we children used to sigh, as we were
hurried through the most romantic piece of our known world, our eyes
upon the mighty keep that held such store of history; and never had that
wish been gratified till now.
I went first into the inn ("hotel" is not to be thought of as applying
to these English villages), to brush up a little after my drive and
inquire about luncheon arrangements. I found it was not the old Black
Horse but a descendant of the same name; however, it was a pleasant
little hostelry, blending not too crudely with its venerable
surroundings. A maid informed me that the rural table d'hôte would not
be ready for half-an-hour, so I set off to get a preliminary peep at the
great "lion" of those parts.
A short walk brought me to the wicket entrance, where an old man
admitted me to the once sternly guarded fortress. And once more I found
myself overwhelmed with a reality beyond all anticipations. The great
castle was far, far greater than I had supposed.
The antiquaries seem agreed that the earthworks are of Roman origin;
their plan is still quite plain to trace--nearly circular, with jutting
squares to east and west; and to think of that, as one stands on the
very embankments, looking down into the very ditch, so wide and deep
that one looks on the tops of trees that have grown huge and hoary in
the bottom of it, is to think of something that rather takes away one's
breath. The British who appropriated the ready-made entrenchments, and
the Normans who ousted them, seem, for once, but mushroom peoples.
But the castle within the ancient ramparts----! I am afraid to begin to
tell how it affected me, seeing it at last, after all these years.
Its human interest to me in childhood was almost exclusively connected
with a royal prisoner once immured there. In my earliest reading days
Miss Strickland's "Queens of England" was my favourite history
book--romance all through, made alive and convincing by the fascinating
steel-engraved portraits of the ladies in their habits as they lived;
and Miss Strickland said--so did everybody at that time--that Queen
Isabella, widow of Edward the Second, was for her sins shut up in
Rising Castle by Edward the Third, there to linger in captivity for
twenty-seven years, until merciful death released her. I never passed
under the great keep without gazing up at the few holes in the wall to
wonder which was the window through which her wild eyes of despair
looked in vain for rescue to the road we travelled. Now that story has
gone the way of so many old stories. Isabella, it seems, had not much to
complain of beyond banishment from Court to a residence in a dull
neighbourhood. She paid visits to her friends from time to time, to
relieve the monotony, and she died quite comfortably in another part of
the country, in a castle of her own. But no single figure is needed to
create human interest for a dwelling-place of the age of this one.
In the reign of William Rufus it was that the castle was built by one
William d'Albini--just about the time when a brother knight of Normandy
"took up his selection" at old H----, on which his descendants have sat
continuously to this present day. Doubtless William and his neighbour
had the equivalent of a pipe and glass together many a time, and
inspected the works in company--these works which were to stand for a
thousand years! Whether both gentlemen married ladies of the land I know
not, but a Cecily (which sounds Saxonish) of William's line and name in
the thirteenth century took the castle and manor of Rising into the
family of Lord Montalt, her husband, where they remained for a good
while. Then it appears to have become royal property, as witness Queen
Isabella consigned thereto by her son.
The Black Prince and Richard the Second are mentioned as owners, if not
occupiers, and it is said that King Richard exchanged it with the Duke
of Brittany for the castle of Brest. In the spacious days of great
Elizabeth it was the Dukes of Norfolk who were in possession, off and
on. Since then it has seemed to belong to Howards--sometimes one branch,
sometimes another--and it belongs to Howards now. What volumes of
history are written between the lines of this brief pedigree!
I went over the bridge and through the Norman gatehouse. I looked about
at the magnificence within, crossed the greensward and turned the corner
to the entrance door. I walked in and up the great staircase of stone to
the splendid archway under which the dead people passed to their great
hall, now roofless and ruined. I surveyed the vaulted stone room with
the Norman windows that was once its vestibule (and at the last a
caretaker's lodging); opened a little door in a corner which disclosed a
stony shaft round which a stony newel stairway corkscrewed up and up to
narrow stony passages and chambers and long arcaded galleries tunnelled
in the thickness of the walls--the steps so worn away by the many
centuries of use that one could not keep foothold on them without the
hand-rope on the wall, the dimensions so circumscribed that one thought
of the burrows in the Egyptian Pyramids. Then I considered that further
exploration would impair the pleasure of an extended rummage at leisure
in the afternoon; also that luncheon would now be ready. And I returned
through the village to the Black Horse.
Looking about I found the _salle-à-manger_, chill, and empty of life. A
long table was set for a meal, but was still without food and without
company. Further investigation brought me to a garden beside the house
where stood a few small tables, at one of which two ladies--mother and
daughter who had shared the box seat of the drag with me--were taking a
light luncheon in peace and privacy. They were having eggs and salad and
bread-and-butter and tea, with green grass under their feet and the
sweet air and sunshine round them; and at once I perceived that this was
the sort of thing, and not the table d'hôte, for me. I took a table at a
distance from them, but, no waitress forthcoming, I went across to ask
them how they had obtained their provisions, which resulted in our
joining forces and having a pleasant meal together. No one else came to
the garden, except the maid who served us, and we chatted together as do
callers at the same house on an At Home day, finding themselves isolated
for the moment on contiguous chairs. One thing leading to another, it
transpired that the young lady, who wore fine diamonds on her engagement
finger, was going to be married in five weeks. A chance allusion to my
own circumstances evoked the further information that her intended
husband was a Melbourne man! That is to say, Melbourne was his
birthplace and the place of business of his firm for which he acted as
London manager. They mentioned his name and I knew it well. I see it in
large letters on a factory wall every time I pass over the railway
between the city and my home, and now I never see it without thinking of
her. By this time if all went right she will have been married a long
time. I hope she is well and happy.
I resumed my explorations of the castle, where I had several chance
encounters with my friends of the inn garden on break-neck stairs and in
stony corridors where there was scarce space for us to pass each other,
while still wandering in the solitude I desired, companioned only by my
thoughts. It was a memorable afternoon. I had never before been in such
close touch with the people of the past, makers of the History of
England which is the lay bible of the British race. The very chambers
they slept in and where they were born and died; the same floors and
walls and stone-ribbed ceilings, the same outlook from the same windows
and loopholes over heath and marsh to distant sea and the dim line of
the coast of Lincolnshire; the Chapel of their penances and
dispensations, where they dedicated the swords of slaughter; the Hall
where they brawled and feasted, the dark holes at blind ends of the
stony labyrinth, which silently witnessed to unthinkable dark deeds. If
I had been better acquainted with old castles than I was, I might have
been less impressed by these things and the reflections they evoked. As
it was, the whole place seemed so thronged with ghosts that I felt as if
I had not room to move amongst them.
And yet I learned from a little talk with those who knew, that a
caretaker--a lady "custodian," moreover--had kept house and home in the
very middle of it all, up to a quite recent date. How _could_ she? Her
bedroom was the "Queen's Room" where Isabella herself had slept (next
door to her "Confession Room"); another that she used was the "Priest's
Chamber," up at the top of that slant-stepped newel stairway. The room
at the top of the great main staircase, with the three Norman windows
and the great dog-toothed Norman archway that once gave entrance to the
hall, was her sitting-room. The evidences were there--archway bricked
up, and a little iron stove (how little it did look, to be sure, in
more ways than one) set against the bricks; windows glazed, boards (I
think) laid down over the flagged floor. I tried to fancy how the lady
custodian had furnished it--to picture her sitting at her book or
needlework under that mighty overmantel above the hearth! I had not then
seen the quarters of the chaplain of Malling Abbey, and how charmingly
ancient and modern can be made to blend in the composition of a home by
a person of intelligence, means and taste. Yet the gatehouse at Malling,
apart from the chaplain's "treatment" of it, is snug and cosy indeed
compared with this. I could live there delightfully myself. But
here----! From kitchen to parlour, from parlour to bedroom the lady
custodian had to make pilgrimages through ruins open to the sky and up
stairways and along tunnel-passages such as one shuddered to think of in
connection with dark nights. Imagine the wind rising after you have gone
to bed, sighing and sobbing like ghosts of tortured captives come back
to the scene of their Mediæval woes, whistling through the loopholes
like the arrows of a besieging army. Think of hearing an owl hoot in the
desolate great hall--the creepings and scratchings of things alive that
you cannot account for--the deadly silence in between, that feels like
the silence of a tiger watching you and crouched to spring!
I was not surprised to learn that the last woman to defy the
associations of the place had found them too much for her, and that
since her time the caretaker had lodged outside the castle instead of
in. Her husband had died in that room of the bricked-up arch and the
little iron stove, and what she went through in the nights of his last
illness, when she had to sit up to watch him, and on the night when she
was left with his coffined corpse for company, nearly drove her out of
her mind. So I was told, and I quite believed it.
I came down at last from the wonderful place, having still time before
me in which to explore the village. Mrs B. had warned me not to neglect
this duty.
It is a beautiful village. As one saw "The King" written all over West
Newton, Dersingham, Wolferton, every acre within a radius of miles from
the royal seat, so here the impress of "The Howards" was plain upon
Rising from end to end. The home of the family is in it; of course,
withdrawn from the gaze of trippers. I passed its guardian walls and
spoke to a gardener who came through a high gate, wheeling his barrowful
of stuff from the grounds within. I think he said that his lady was in
residence. I strolled on to the village green to look at an ancient
cross which Mrs B. had mentioned as an important feature. So it is--a
very interesting example of the wayside shrine. I could find no special
story attached to it, but one felt sure that it commemorated "The
Howards" in some way. The rectory near by--a home of dignified leisure,
also withdrawn from the gaze of trippers--is in their gift. The church
is full of memorials of them. If I know little of castles I know much of
the churches of my native country, and how remarkable they are. This one
must be ranked with the ecclesiastical gems of Norfolk, which is so rich
in them--although I found that it had been very thoroughly "restored,"
which generally means in some points altered from the original plan,
within late years. By the way, Mrs B. has a valuable collection of the
etchings of John Sells Cotman, whose work is, for architects and
antiquaries, an authority on Norfolk churches and cathedrals, abbeys and
castles, as they were a century ago; and I am not sure, but I think that
one of them shows the square tower of Rising church without the singular
roof which now covers it. However, it is a beautiful building, plainly
Norman throughout; with all its richness of ornamentation, massively
simple and sincere, worthy to stand beside its great neighbour, which
has defied the chances and changes of a thousand years. The hand of the
Howards may be seen all over it, inside and out, but they have written
only their love and taste, and said as little as possible about their
own importance.
Just across the road from the church is another Howard institution of
the past, in which I was deeply interested--Trinity Hospital, otherwise
the Bede House, otherwise almshouses for decayed females of the working
families on the estate. Here the gaze of the tripper is not objected
to--is probably welcomed, since an alms-dish stands on the table at
which the "Governess" (which I think is the correct title of the lady
superintendent) gives you final items of information about the place;
the vessel dumbly suggesting a donation from the visitor, to be devoted
to the comfort of the old ladies in providing them with such little
extra luxuries as they can enjoy. I did not need the hint, and I should
think the offerings of visitors ought to almost "keep" the old ladies,
who want so little.
It is a charming bit of architecture, and to me it seemed immensely old.
I said so to the lady superintendent, and you should have seen her
amused smile at my ignorance! "Oh dear, no," she politely corrected me,
"_this_ is not old; not more than three or four hundred years at the
most." From her way of saying it, you would have supposed it had been
jerry-built last week. But she was right; in Rising village, a neighbour
of the great castle, an appanage of the Howards, it was a mere mushroom.
Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, erected it in the reign of King James
the Second.
Nevertheless, it is a charming bit of architecture. She could not shake
me in that belief. A sort of gatehouse of two storeys, capped with three
pointed roofs, two square and a saddle-back between them, gives entrance
through an open archway to the most delightfully green and peaceful
quadrangle, which was a picture indeed that golden summer afternoon.
Exactly fronting me as I entered was another block of buildings,
comprising a little chapel, a reception-room, and the quarters of the
"Governess." Between this block and the gateway block, and joined to
each on both sides and to one another, the dwellings of the pensioners
made out the square, which was edged with the ever-beautiful English
flower-border, the middle being filled in with the ever-matchless
English lawn. All the roofs were large, steep, massive and heavily
tiled; the chimneys on the same scale, the walls (except in the two
blocks mentioned) low, and pierced with square latticed windows and the
cottage doors--a pair to each pensioner--most of which stood open, with
the old ladies, at their knitting or what not, sunning themselves at
some of them. There was about everything that sober orderliness,
scrupulous neatness and finish, so striking and so grateful to the eye
of the old colonist, and such an enhancement and completion of the charm
of rural England in characteristic scenes like this. It was a
reproduction on a small scale of the college quadrangles at Cambridge,
the composition of which had so enchanted me. I was enchanted with the
Howard Almshouse, and inclined to envy the Howard protégée her haven of
repose.
But the twentieth-century cosmopolitan, who has more or less gone with
the times, has strange conflicts of feeling within the breast on being
shown the uniform of the Howard protégée, the wearing of which is a
condition of her tenure of one of these picture-book homes. Out of
cardboard boxes and swathings of tissue paper the lady superintendent
brought forth the brand-new cloak and hat that appeared to be kept for
display to visitors; and I looked at them. Taken as a garment, and not a
symbol, the cloak of scarlet cloth with the Howard badge embroidered on
it is quite beautiful; the hat is another matter. It seems made of the
stuff used for the modern gentleman's bell topper, and in shape
resembles the Welsh peasant hat; one has seen it also in pictures of
witches, of the time when they were tried by fire and millponds. It has
a towering and tapering sugarloaf crown, and a round, narrow brim, and
is worn over a white cap with a full border. In other words, the uniform
is a costume of the time of James the Second.
Now....
Well, I mentioned the matter in local circles once or twice. My
non-committal attitude did not fail to evoke disparaging remarks upon
the Howard Bede House fashions, and especially the hat. "They don't like
wearing it," I was told. Who can wonder? "But for them things, there's a
many would like to go in, and ought to go in, as can't bring
theirselves to do it."
In Ely, when I left that town for Australia, there was a pious
foundation which similarly persisted in making its beneficiaries wear
the costume of the founder's age. Long past the middle of the nineteenth
century though it was, unfortunate little boys had to run the gauntlet
of the street in old-man beaver hats and full-skirted old-man coats with
great flap-pockets--spectacles to make the humane heart bleed. When I
returned, I found the old free school building extant and unchanged, but
the preposterous uniform no more. Now that the twentieth century has
passed its first decade, I think it would be a fair thing to let the
witch's hat, and the "badge" that has lost its meaning, go.
I was dreamily making my way back to the Black Horse when I spied the
village post office--the "open door" to all persons and peoples into the
great world of living human affairs that I had been feeling so remote
from. Something within me sprang awake at the sight--it was the
instinctive although often unconscious desire for human sympathy that
accompanies any unusually impressive experience. I stepped into the tiny
place, and sought pen and ink. I drew a postcard from a packet I had
bought of the old man at the gate of the castle grounds, and wrote under
a picture of the great stone staircase: "Here I am, and I wish you were
with me," or words to that effect. I addressed it to my friend at Boston
in Massachusetts, who had sent many a token of the same kind to me,
stamped it, and dropped it into the letter-slot. Then, feeling no longer
alone--only just as much so as I liked to be--I stepped back into the
sunshine, happy in my thoughts of her and of how she would understand.
And, as I was crossing the road, thus bemused and absentminded, a lady,
evidently sight-seeing by herself as I was, crossed it from the other
side, and in passing stopped me to ask some question about the way to
somewhere. She turned out to be one of our driving party, although I had
not noticed her. When I had replied to her introductory query, she said:
"I saw you with Mrs B. this morning. You are Mrs C., are you not?" Then
she told me she had a sister living in Melbourne, married to a Melbourne
doctor, and she wondered if by chance I knew them. I did not know her
sister, but the name of her distinguished brother-in-law every
Australian knew. This little encounter, opening the lines of the
"wireless" to my dear home on the other side of the world, filled up the
measure of emotional satisfaction that was so abundantly vouchsafed to
me that day.
Or almost. The drive home (by a different route) was as delightful as
the drive out. And when I reached Mrs B.'s and the capacious arm-chair,
and M.'s most charming tea-table ...
I am afraid I must confess, after all my sentimental rhapsodies, that
the crowning joy of my expedition to Rising Castle was the heavenly cup
of tea that awaited my return to the starting point.