The Retrospect

by Ada Cambridge

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.