The Retrospect

by Ada Cambridge

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.