It consisted of Sir Marmaduke Wade, his son, daughter and niece—the two officers, his guests—with a large following of grooms, falconers, and other attendants; a number of them on horseback, with hawks perched upon their shoulders; a still larger number afoot—conducting the retrievers, others chiens de chasse, employed in the venerie of the time.
On clearing the enclosure of the park, the gay procession turned in a southerly direction—towards the beautiful lake of Fulmere; which, fed by the Alder “burn,” lay embosomed between two parallel spurs of the beech-embowered Chilterns.
Volume Three—Chapter Twelve.
The Lake “Fulmere” is no longer in existence; though a village—so picturesque, as to appear the creation of a painter’s fancy—still retains the name. The “mere” itself—yielding to the all-absorbing spirit of utilitarianism—has disappeared from the landscape—drained off by the brook “Alderburne,” and the rivers Colne, and Thames, to mingle its waters with the ocean. Its bed has become a meadow—the residue of its waters being retained in sundry stagnant pools, which serve to supply the neighbouring markets with cress, and the pharmacopoeia of the village apothecaries with “calamus root.”
Once a broad sheet of crystal water covered the cress-beds of Fulmere—a sheet with sedgy shores, in which sheltered the bittern, and blue heron, the bald coot, the water-hen, and the gold-crested widgeon.
It was so on that day, when Dorothy Dayrell—the daughter of Sir Frederick, Lord of the Manor of Fulmere—invited her friends to be present at a grand entertainment—including falconry—the spectacle to be exhibited upon the shores of the lake.
Dorothy Dayrell was something more than pretty. She was what might be termed a “dashing creature,”—a little devilish, it is true—but this, in the eyes of her male acquaintances, only rendered her prettiness more piquant. Following the fashion of her father, she was of the true Tory type—devotedly attached to King and State—and blindly believing in that theory—worthy the conception of a community of apes—the “right divine.”
Silly as is the belief, it was then entertained, as, now. At that time, human bipeds of both sexes were just as parasitical, as they are at the present hour; and as loudly proclaimed their ignoble longings for King Stork, or King Log. Not, however, quite so unanimously. The word “republic” was beginning to be heard, issuing from the lips of great statesmen, and true patriots. It was beginning to find an echo in remote villages, and cottage homes, throughout all England.