Set in Silver
sheet of water as a mirror. Once this was a guest-house for the Abbey;
now it's called the Palace House, and deserves its name. Its
looking-glass is really only a long creek, which spills out of the
Solent, but it seems like a lake; and you've only to walk along a meadow
path to the refectory of the old abbey. From there you go through a
mysterious door into the ruined cloisters, which used to belong to the
Cistercians--the "White Monks." King John provided money for the
building; which proves that it's an ill wind which blows no one any
good, because the stingy, tyrannical old king wouldn't have given a
penny to the abbots if they hadn't scourged him in a nightmare he had. I
shan't soon forget the magnolia and the myrtle in the quadrangle, and if
I were one of the long-vanished monks, I should haunt the place. There
couldn't be a lovelier one.
From Beaulieu we went to Lymington, a quaint and ancient town, with a
picturesque port. Everything there looked happy and sleepy, except the
postillions on the Bournemouth coach, which was stopping at the hotel
where we had an early lunch. They were wide awake and jolly, under their
old-fashioned, broad-brimmed beaver hats.
After Lymington, we skimmed through the Forest, hardly knowing or caring
whither, though we did manage to find Brockenhurst, and Mark Ash, which
was almost the finest of all with its glorious trees. Our one wish was
to avoid highways, and Sir Lionel was clever about that. The sweetest
bit was a mere by-path, hardly to be called a road, though the surface
was superb. Young Nick had to get down and open a gate, which led into
what seemed a private place, and no one who hadn't been told to go that
way would have thought of it. On the other side of the gate it was just
another part of forest fairyland, whose inhabitants turned themselves
into trees as we, in our motor-car, intruded on them. I never saw such
extraordinary imitations of the evergreen family as they contrived on
the spur of the moment. It was a glamorous wood, and throughout the
whole forest I had more and more the feeling that England isn't so small
as it's painted. There are such vast spaces not lived in at all, yet
haunted with legend and history. One place we passed--hardly a place, it
was so small--was called Tyrrel's Ford; and there Sir Walter Tyrrel is
said to have stopped to have his horse's shoes reversed by a blacksmith,
on his flight to the sea, after killing the Red King. Or no, now I
remember, this was next day, between Ringwood and Christchurch!
When we were having tea at Lyndhurst on our way back, at a hotel like a
country house in a great garden, we found out that it once had been the
home of your forty-second cousin, the Duc de Stacpoole, who came to
England with Louis Philippe. There's his beautiful tapestry, to this
day, in the dining-room, and his gorgeous magnolia tree looking
wistfully into the window, as if asking why he isn't there to admire its
creamy flowers, big as fat snowballs.
On our way home the rabbits of the New Forest were having a party, and
were annoyed with us for coming to it without invitations. They kept
"crossing our path," as people in melodramas say, so that we had to go
slowly, not to run over them, and sometimes they galloped ahead, just in
front of us, exactly in the middle of the road, so that we couldn't pass
them. Dick kept longing to "pot" at the poor little pets, but Sir Lionel
said he had lived out of England long enough to find a good deal of
pleasure in life without taking that of any other creature. That isn't a
very dragonish sentiment, is it?
Next day we had a delicious run (there's no other adjective which quite
expresses it) through Ringwood, which is a door of the Forest, to
Christchurch, another Abbey--(no, it's a Priory; but to me that's a
detail) which stands looking at its own beauty in a crystal mirror. It's
Augustan, not Cistercian, like Beaulieu; and it's august, as well; very
noble; finer to see than many a cathedral. You and I, in other lands,
have industriously travelled many miles to visit churches without half
as many "features" as Christchurch. One of its quaintest is a leper's
window; and a few of the beauties are the north transept, with unique
"hatchet" ornamentation; a choir with wonderful old oak carvings--and
the tomb of the Countess of Salisbury, of whom you read aloud to me when
I was small, in a book called "Some Heroines of History." She came last
in the volume because she was only a countess, and not a queen, but I
cried when she said she didn't mind being killed, only being touched by
a horrid, common axe, and wanted them to cut off her head with a sword.
There are lots of other beautiful things in the church, too, and a nice
legend about an oak beam which grew long in the night, and building
materials which came down from a hill of their own accord, because one
of the builders was Christ himself. That's why they named it
Christchurch, you see, instead of Twyneham, as it would otherwise have
been.
We stopped only long enough, after we had seen the Priory, to pay our
respects to a splendid old Norman house near by, and then dashed away
toward Boscombe and Bournemouth, which reminded me a little of
Baden-Baden, with its gardens and fountains and running waters; its
charming trees and exciting-looking shops. Just because it's modern, we
didn't pause, but swept on, through scenery which suddenly degenerated.
However, as I heard Sir Lionel say to Mrs. Senter: "You can't go far in
this country without finding beauty"; and presently she was her own
lovely self again, fair as Nature intended her to be. I mean England,
not Mrs. Senter, who is lovelier than Nature made her.
We ran through miles of dense pine forests, where rhododendrons grew
wild; where gulls spread silver wings and trailed coral feet a few yards
above our heads; and the tang of the sea mingled with pine-balsam in our
nostrils.
Soon after dull, but historic Wareham we came quite into the heart of
Thomas Hardy's country. Scarcely had we turned our backs on Wareham
(which I wasn't sorry to do), when I cried out at something on a distant
height--something which was like a background in a mediaeval picture. It
was Corfe Castle, of which I'd been thinking ever since Amesbury,
because of the wicked Elfrida; but the glimpse was delusive, for the
dark shape hid in a moment, and we didn't see it again for a long
time--not until our curving road ran along underneath the castle's
towering hill. Then it soared up with imposing effect, giving an
impression of grisly strength which was heightened the nearer we
approached. Distance lends no enchantment to Corfe, for the castle
dominates the dour, gray town that huddles round it, and is never nobler
than when you tap for admittance at its gates.
I tried to think, as we waited to go in, how young Edward felt--Edward
the Martyr--when he stood at the gates, waiting to go in and visit his
half-brother whom he loved, and his step-mother Elfrida, whom he hated.
He never left the castle alive, poor boy! Afterward, in the ruins, I
went to the window where Elfrida was supposed to have watched the young
king's coming, before she ran down to the gates and directed the murder
which was planned to give her own son the kingdom. It made the story
seem almost too realistic, because, as you often tell me, my imagination
carries me too fast and too far. There's nothing easier than to send it
back ten or twelve centuries in the same number of minutes--and it's
such a cheap way of travelling, too!
Corfe is in Dorset, you must know, a county as different from others as
I am different from the real Ellaline Lethbridge, and the castle is at
the very centre of the Isle of Purbeck, which makes it seem even more
romantic than it would otherwise. I'm afraid it wasn't really even begun
in the days of Elfrida, or "AElfrith," who had only a hunting lodge
there; but if people _will_ point out her window, am I to blame if I try
to make firm belief attract shy facts? Besides, facts are such dull dogs
in the historical kennels until they've been taught a few tricks.
Anyhow, Corfe is Norman, at worst, and not only did King John keep much
treasure there, but one supposes there's some hidden still. If I could
only have found it, I'd be buying a castle for you and me to live in.
Sir Lionel thinks that I, as his ward, will live in his castle; and he
was telling me at Corfe about the Norman tower at Graylees. But, alas, I
knew better. Oh, I didn't mean that "alas"! Consider it erased; and the
other silly things I wrote you the other night, please. They're all so
_useless_.
There were loads of interesting prisoners in Corfe Castle, at one time
or another, knights from France, and fair ladies, the fairest of all,
the beautiful "Damsel of Brittany," who had claims to the English crown.
And kings have visited there; and in Cromwell's day a lady and her
daughters successfully defended it in a great siege. It was such a
splendid and brave defence that it seems sad, even to this day, to think
how the castle fell after all, a year later, and to see the great stones
and masses of masonry lying, far below the height, exactly where they
rolled when Parliament ordered the conquered towers to be blown up by
gunpowder. The Bankes family, who still own Corfe, must be proud of that
Lady Bankes, their ancestress, who held the castle. And isn't it nice,
the Bankes still have the old keys, where they live, at Kingston Lacy?
You like Thomas Hardy's "Hand of Ethelberta" next to "Far from the
Madding Crowd." Well, Coomb Castle in that book is really Corfe Castle.
I told you we were in Hardy country. After Wareham, and not very far
away, at Wool, is an old, old manor-house of the Turbervilles, turned
into a farmhouse now. You don't need to be reminded of what Hardy made
of that, I know.
We lunched at an interesting old inn, like all the rest of the ancient
houses of Corfe, slate-roofed, grim and gray. Then we coasted down the
steep hill to the plain again, making for Swanage. It was dusty, but we
weren't sorry, because, just when we were travelling rather fast, on a
perfectly clear road, a policeman popped out like a Jack-in-the-Box,
apparently from nowhere. You could tell by his face he was a "trappist,"
as Dick calls the motor-spies, and though Sir Lionel wasn't really going
beyond the legal limit, he glared at our number as if he meant mischief.
But that number-plate had thoughtfully masked itself in dust, so with
all the will in the world he could work us no harm after our backs were
turned. Once in a while it does seem as if Nature sympathized with the
poor, maligned motorist whom nobody loves, and is willing to throw her
protection over him. It would be like tempting Providence to polish off
dust or mud, in such circumstances, wouldn't it?
My face was a different matter, though, and I longed to polish it.
Before we got to Swanage, it felt--even under chiffon--just as an iced
cake must feel. Only the cake, fortunately for its contour, never needs
to smile.
We were going to Swanage because of the caves--Tilly Whim Caves. Did you
ever hear of them, Parisienne mamma? Small blame to you, if not, because
one can't know everything; but they are worth seeing; and the Swanage
harbour is a little dream. The town is good, too. Old-world, and very,
very respectable-looking, as if it were full of long-established lawyers
and clergymen, yet not dull, like Wareham, which was important in Saxon
days, long before Swanage was born or thought of. It's "Knollsea" in the
"Hand of Ethelberta." Do you remember? And Alfred the Great had a
victory close by--so close, that in a storm the Danish ships blew into
what is the town now, as if they had been butterflies with their wings
wet.