In the case of the next, and for our purposes, the last inmate of Castle Rising, we have an illustration of the troublesome manner in which industrious diggers after facts destroy established and easily assimilated statements by historians. In the case of Isabella, the She-wolf of France, whose paramour Mortimer had caused her husband, Edward II, to be murdered with unexampled barbarity in Berkeley Castle, it was nice and easy to learn that, after the accession of Edward III and the fall and execution of Mortimer, "the Queen Mother was deprived of her enormous jointure, and shut up in the Castle of Rising, where she spent the remaining twenty-seven years of her life in obscurity." If ever there was a thoroughly bad woman, that woman was Isabella; and to dispose of her in a single sentence was nice and simple. Unhappily it seems, like the story of Alfred's cakes and other cherished traditions, to be entirely wrong. While Isabella was at Rising Edward allowed her £3000 a year first, and £4000 a year later; letters patent under her hand were issued from her "Castle of Hertford" in the twentieth year of Edward III; Edward III visited her often at Castle Rising; she was allowed to make a pilgrimage to Walsingham (which after all was quite near); she visited Norwich with Edward III and his Queen in 1344; and she died at Hertford Castle, having been there since 1357. In fact neither the sufferings nor the obscurity of the She-wolf of France were of a striking character.
Inland from Castle Rising you may see a ridge of upland, pine and heather-clad, with here and there some woodland and some agricultural land, following the line of the coast, but three or four miles from it. Your best route will be to travel some three miles to Wolferton, along a level and excellent road. The roads of Norfolk are, indeed, good throughout in my experience. At Wolferton you can hardly fail to notice the peculiar stone, of a dark reddish-brown colour, of which the church is built. It is called "Carr" stone locally, a great deal of it is used in cottages, houses and churches, and if it seems a trifle redder to you at Wolferton than elsewhere—it never so struck me—the redness is attributable to a fire of 1486, after which a licence to collect alms for rebuilding was issued! If such licences were a condition precedent to similar collections now the Post Office would be much the poorer, and some of us might be richer. What must also strike the spectator from the road is the very stately tower, and, by entering, you will see a fine specimen of the not too common hammer-beam roof. From Wolferton to Sandringham, or to its gates, I have walked and driven at almost every season of the year, always to find fresh beauties in that gentle slope. In winter, with snow upon the ground, when the fresh green is on the larches in spring, when bracken is pushing out its fronds in embryo knots, when the heather is in its glory, and, best of all, when the rhododendrons are in bloom, it is as beautiful a sight as any upon which the eye of man need desire to rest. Moreover, this stretch of the heath-lands of East Anglia looks the very place for any roving bird to haunt, and it is a real bond of union between me and the artist, who gives to these pages more than half their brightness, to learn from him that the sheldrake nests here habitually.
At the top of the hill on the right you obtain a glimpse of the parish church of Sandringham, modern, and regularly attended by the King and Queen, and of the park across which the King walks to service, for all the world like any other country gentleman. A hundred yards or so farther on you are opposite the principal gates. These are of exquisite ironwork, and were presented to the then Prince of Wales in 1864 by the County of Norfolk, justly proud of its newly acquired landowner, and entitled to be proud too of the workmanship which turned these gates out at Norwich. Now Sandringham is not a place that is shown on stated days, as many houses are. It is too small for that; it is indeed one of the few places where the King and Queen can enjoy real privacy, but, as luck will have it, I have seen Sandringham inside, and a brief impression of it is given, partly, perhaps, because it may be welcome from a careful witness, but mainly because Mr. Walter Rye has done it injustice. "Sandringham itself," he wrote in 1885, "is nothing much to see. It was bought vastly dear, and has had a tremendous lot of money spent on it. Gunton or Blickling would have been much more suited to him, and with the same amount of money spent on them would by this time have been little palaces." Very likely, but the Prince of Wales, as he was then, desired not a palace but a home, in which he could live during his all too rare holidays from public duty the life of a country gentleman with his family; in which he could interest himself in farming, and could enjoy really good shooting; in which his Princess could indulge her taste for gardening, and for keeping dogs of many kinds; in which, last and best of all, his children could lead simple lives and be much in the open air. All that he found in Sandringham. The situation is pretty and remarkably healthy, the shooting is of the best and full of variety, the gardens reveal the taste of their Royal mistress, the house is full of dear memories and of rare possessions. It may not be very beautiful architecturally, but it is essentially a house to be lived in, and it is something in its favour that, in an age which believes in the health-giving power of the sun, it is absolutely suffused with all the light there is. Of a truth Mr. Rye's sympathy is quite uncalled for, and even rather needlessly offensive. By the way, as you pass you may chance to hear a Sandringham clock strike twelve and find that your impeccable watch only admits half-past eleven; and you may remember to have seen in some of the papers at various times that it is the King's hobby to have all his clocks half an hour fast so that he may never be late. It is his hobby, but its object is not to secure punctuality so much as to cheat the morning out of an extra half-hour. The evening hours can be prolonged at pleasure, but to start shooting at 9.30 instead of ten on a winter's day is a great gain.
HEATH NEAR SANDRINGHAM
Blickling, it should be added, is near Aylsham. It was owned once by Harold, then by the Bishops of Norwich, and then by Sir Thomas Boleyn, father of Anne Boleyn. "A sheet of water about a mile long, in the middle of a beautiful and well-wooded park, is a fitting adjunct to the noble red house, built in the reign of James I, with its fine ceiled galleries and carvings, and its grand staircase." So Mr. Rye, and then he passes off to heraldry. Gunton is, or was, in the same neighbourhood. "Murray" says that the house "of white brick, enlarged by Wyatt 1785,"—neither statement sounds alluring—"is without interest." Mr. Rye says elsewhere "the hall was burnt out not long ago" (he writes in 1885) "and is not yet rebuilt, and very picturesque it looks with its great gaunt shell pierced by rows of empty windows. It would make a capital ruin, and might just as well be left as it is, and a smaller house, more suitable to the fortunes of the Harbords, built elsewhere in the park."
Shooting and motoring are the great out-door occupations of Sandringham. If the King be at home the chances of seeing a royal car on these roads are many, and in late November you may often hear the guns popping like a feu de joie. Nay, on the road, which turns sharply to the left for Dersingham by the gate, proceeding through fine trees on both sides, and on the level for a while, and then down a steep hill, I have had the good fortune to see the Prince of Wales and the German Emperor bringing pheasants down in a manner more than workmanlike. So to Dersingham, a sunny village lying in a cup of the modest little hills. Here again you will be struck by the all-pervading use of the local carr stone, very neatly dressed in minute blocks, apparently impervious to weather and incapable of taking any tone from rain and wind and sun. Picturesque to the eye of a stranger it certainly is not; but the walls and houses built of it are trim to a Dutch point of neatness, and, to accustomed eyes, it no doubt seems to be part of the established order of things. It is no harm suggesting again that in relation to the appearance of things, the product of man's hand, of the operations of nature, or of the two combined, first impressions are not to be trusted in all cases. Custom makes a world of difference. A Chinaman, or a Hottentot, has, for example, ideas completely opposite to ours concerning female beauty. Without yielding to either in the matter of opinion, even in these extreme instances, we may possibly concede that standards of beauty are not to be defined with scientific precision. "Carr" stone buildings to some of us may look a trifle grim and formal, although their ferruginous tone is not cold; at worst they represent the resolve to use local material, which is usually consonant with art and sense, and no doubt their appearance excites no feeling of distaste in the people of Norfolk who, after all, are the persons principally concerned. Of this same stone the church is built. Here the passers by will be struck by the stately proportions of the lofty tower, and, if he enters, he will notice the orderly condition of all things, as well as a piscina and a hagioscope. To the neat condition of things, which should be normal, attention is called in this case because, apparently, it is the complete opposite of the state of things prevailing in the early seventies, when everything capable of suffering from neglect had so suffered. Dersingham is a pleasantly tidy village, but not "model" in the artificial sense. It boasts a hotel, "The Feathers," where I stayed for a week a good many years ago. It was then one of the worst in England, but, in new hands, it is understood to be better. On the whole, however, Dersingham is not recommended for a sojourn, nor has it, in all probability, been encouraged to lay itself out to attract visitors.
BLICKLING HALL