The Retrospect
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But this was the real thing – this was the old place, sacred to the old times. Once more I waded through heavy sand, that sifted into my boots, as we did before New H – , with its greens and esplanades and Jubilee Shelters, was dreamed of; I had to look about before I could find a clump of sea-grass on which to rest after my walk, while I surveyed and meditated upon the scene.
As was the case with other haunts of childhood and youth revisited, the actual place was not half the size nor of half the importance that I had supposed. To think that this little patch of beach and sandbank, with one occasional sail-boat (old Sam's Rose in June), a few donkeys and four or five bathing-machines for all its furnishing, should have been such a dream of romance, such a memory of joy, for more than half-a-century! But there was no doubt about it, and less than ever now. All the year round, in those old years, from late summer to early summer, I used to be counting days to "the seaside" again; and the rapture of each first evening when, the coach having dropped us at our lodgings, and our tea having been unpacked and eaten, we trooped to the beach (buying our spades and buckets at the post office on the way), to make sure that the sea was there before we went to bed – I could not outlive it in a thousand years. If ever I was happy in this mortal life, I was happy here, although I did break my heart over the corpse of a baby brother and have salt rubbed into a cut foot – also a governess in attendance and lesson-books, at times. But not the governess, fortunately; otherwise old H – would not have called me back like this.
The tide was in, peacefully lapping the smooth shore. When it went out it went a long way, uncovering many acres of fine ribbed sand, strewn over with sea jewels; and great dark patches, that were mussel beds, the treasure ground of all. What multi-coloured sea-anemones we found there! And how hard it was to remember that the returning tide, with its unseen flank movements, would assuredly drown us if in our absorption we lost count of time! And away there, also hidden under the silver sheet, lay the mysterious buried forest – post-glacial trees with their black trunks and limbs intact, in one of which a stone axe was found sticking, just as the Stone Age man had left it. There were, I had been told, ebon gateposts, dug from this submerged woodland, on farm lands of the neighbourhood, and fragments came into our possession, fashioned into brooches and bracelets, as presents from local friends. I used not to consider the significance of these things. Now I read the buried forest into the pedigree of my native country, the splendour of which is lost upon those who stay at home.
When I was rested and had gazed my fill, I rose and turned to the right, up the low bank, towards the village – to find our old camping-places, if they existed still. I ought to have gone through a wicket at the top of the bank, through the narrow, high-hedged lane, past the windows of the old coaching inn, through which Honor W. used to lean and chat with the casual wayfarer and her father's guests. Where is that pleasant-voiced, happy-faced daughter of the old inn now? Does she sit somewhere, in cap and spectacles, darning socks for her grandchildren, amongst those who never realise that she was once young and handsome? I gave her memory greeting, while I turned my head from her transformed home. Just here I found myself rather alien and astray, but only for a few steps.
For there, across the road, were the coastguard quarters, as surely their old selves as I was. And no feature of the place could have appealed to me more eloquently, if only because in one of them the antiseptic surgery I have spoken of was practised on my foot. That was in a summer when all of the few regular lodging-places had been bespoken ahead of us, and we could only get in by the desperate expedient of subsidising the coastguard. Three of the little dwellings divided the family amongst them, the largest available parlour being the rendezvous for meals. I slept with two sisters in a four-post bed with blue-and-white-checked curtains, and the dispossessed rightful occupiers used to cross a corner of the room to get to their makeshift couch elsewhere, after we had retired and were supposed to be asleep. We did not like to miss the event of the stealthy passage of our coastguardsman from door to door, creeping in his stockinged feet, shading his candle with his hand, on such nights as he was off duty.
One of his brother officials was a clever worker in jet, amber and cornelian, found on the coast; his jewel-trays, prepared for summer visitors, held ornaments that were an ever-recurring joy to inspect and finger, especially if we could buy something – a cross or heart or string of beads for the neck, or a "faith-hope-and-charity" to add to one's bunch of charms. Another and particularly dear coastguardsman employed his genius and leisure for years upon a large model of a battleship of the period. It was the glory of his spotless parlour, which it quite monopolised. He said he was going to present it to the boy Prince of Wales – afterwards Edward our King. Crowns and palaces would be as naught to him, we were sure, when he found himself in possession of this wonder of the world. And did he ever?
Wandering on, I came to the cobbled courtyard, closed with a wide door at night, in the recesses of which we kept house through another summer. The very cobbles were there still! And farther on, the terrace of larger houses —the houses, snapped up by the early birds – where we sojourned for the summer of several years, and where the little brother died. Dear little golden-head! Dolls were nowhere in the season when he reigned. It was the end of the summer, through which his sunny beauty had been the admiration of the beach and the adoration of his family, that he was snatched from us. The terrace reminded me of one forgotten shadow upon the shining picture of the Past – the black day when father and mother drove away with the little coffin in a closed carriage, to lay him with his baby forerunners in the churchyard at H – , leaving us behind with our governess in a paradise despoiled. Miss W. it was, father's favourite, she of the Rowland's Kalydor-and-ink affair. And, by the way, I remember that, soon after our return home that year, I went to L – with her, and accompanied her when she paid a call on the lady principal of the school where she had been educated, who had recommended her to us. This lady had an imposing presence – I can see her now – in dark blue poplin or black moire antique, adorned with a collar of choice lace. She and Miss W. were brightly chatting together, when I interposed with the great and solemn news that I had been bursting to impart: "Our baby is dead." I think I expected her to collapse under the shock, but the shock was mine. She glanced at me casually, then turned to Miss W. with a laugh. "Well," said she, "it's one less for you to be bothered with." And Miss W. laughed back as she replied that, yes, it was. Oh, no doubt she was a cat, the pretty and amiable Miss W. And the lady principal, a wife and mother, was just the sort to have had the training of her.
I did not get as far as the old church on these occasions, when I rambled alone between tea and dinner. The pony carriage took me there, when we drove about for two hours between breakfast and luncheon, and through the beautiful old park, that even now was so proudly exclusive that the public might pass through the gates on but one day of the week. But I had not forgotten the tombs of the old family – fourteenth and fifteenth and sixteenth century monuments – and its great home, where it had dwelt since William the Conqueror, when the Norman founder took a Saxon lady to wife. Never, from that day to this, has the line of descent been broken, or the lord of that line been dispossessed of these lands. The charters that gave them are still in the muniment-room of the Hall, and Mrs B. showed me an enclosed copse, a dark piece of wild woodland, which she said was Saxon land that had never been touched since a Saxon kingdom owned it. The key was a sacred heirloom of the family, and one of the articles of the family creed was that no feet should enter there except its own. The whole history of England had passed it by – this one bit, probably the only bit in all England, of virgin Saxon territory!
O England! England! How wonderful she is!
CHAPTER XII
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.