Some fifty years ago a stranger went to Caerleon, and without giving his name or stating his errand, took up his abode at the Hanbury Arms, one of the oldest hostelries in the kingdom. The Hanbury Arms is a white, quaintly-built house, facing the Usk, and originally stood at a point in the road commanding three approaches to the city. But the change of time has given a new entrance to Caerleon, and travellers will now find the Hanbury Arms on the remote side. Its low-browed windows, with the stone mullions of unusual thickness, and the square hooded dripstones above, indicate that the house dates from the fourteenth or fifteenth century. To this place the stranger made his way, his advent being almost unnoticed and his purpose unknown. A local chronicler wrote: “Quiet and unobtrusive to a degree, he soon attracted attention from his very reserved and seclusive habits. Day after day passed, and his figure was seldom seen. Frequently he would leave the house early in the morning, and go no one knew whither, and on his return retire to his room until next morning. It was soon recognised that the stranger was fond of long walks, and there was not a hill in the neighbourhood up whose sides he did not climb. For a time no companion or friend seemed to notice him, but occasionally a letter arriving at the post office was delivered to him. At first the name attracted no attention, but at length ‘Alfred Tennyson,’ inscribed on successive missives, seemed to have a special interest for the local postmaster. He repeated the name until its familiarity led him to suspect that the stranger was no other than the Poet Laureate, and this ultimately proved correct. On the fact becoming generally known that Tennyson was staying at Caerleon, visitors frequently called upon him, but he endeavoured to maintain his seclusion to the last.... In 1859 the result of Tennyson’s sojourn at ‘Caerwysg’ was seen, when he produced to the world his Idylls of the King. Some few of the inhabitants still remember the poet.” Tennyson’s half-dozen allusions to Caerleon are slight, but they do not lack distinctness; the most striking are those semi-descriptive references in Geraint and Enid, and in Balin and Balan, neither of which could have been so written had not the poet visited the spot.
The Caerleon of fancy, not of reality, is described at much greater length and with much higher charm by Lytton. If Tennyson was content with a sweeping reference to the palace and its chambers, Lytton could only be satisfied with a detailed account of the High Council Hall in which was set the king’s ivory throne, and around which gathered “the Deathless Twelve of the Heroic King,” the Knights of the Round Table. He tells how the dragon of the Cymri “spread with calm wing o’er Carduel’s domes of gold,” and how the city lay in a vale, sheltered by the dark forests which mantled the environing hills, while his picture of the daily customs of the people of the city was revealed in the words:—
“Some plied in lusty race the glist’ning oar;
Some noiseless snared the silver-scaléd prey;
Some wreathed the dance along the level shore;
And each was happy in his chosen way.”
But this was purely the city of vision. The faint light which history throws upon the dark period of the British occupation shows us that Caerleon was continually given over to warfare of the wildest character. It is associated also in the Fabliaux with the darkest event in Arthur’s personal history—an event in which Mordred eventually acted as Nemesis.
Were all the romances written which have Caerleon as their background of scenery, the long stories of the ill-fated brethren Balin and Balan, of Geraint and Enid, of many a knightly quest and adventure, and of many a great undertaking by the “fair beginners of a nobler time,” would have to be related anew. The half-historic, half-fabulous histories of Dubritius the archbishop, of Taliesin the chief of bards, of Talhairan, the father of poetry—all men of Caerleon—would likewise have to be recounted, but the complete narratives must be sought in the chronicles, the triads, and the “Mabinogion.” Yet some of the dust under which lies the golden-domed city, and some of the ruins beneath which sleeps slain romance, mingle with the dust and ruins of history; and a little of that history may be deciphered still in the Isca Silurum of the Romans, where Caractacus held his court, where the Præter deposited the eagles, where justice was dealt out in the name of Cæsar, where Saxons and Britons met in one of their last deadly struggles, and where the dragon of the Cymry ultimately prevailed, and Arthur Pendragon rose and had his name set “high on all the hills and in the signs of heaven.”