SARAH, LADY TUNNELL-PENGE
From a painting by Augustus Punter
FFRADDLE of 1643 was very different from the Ffraddle of 1789, and still more different from the Ffraddle of 1832. At a time when civil war was raging between Jacobites and Papists and Roundheads and Ironsides and everything, Ffraddle stood grey, silent and indomitable—the very spirit of peace allied with strength seemed embodied in its grim masonry. The clash of arms and the death cries from millions of rebellious throats which echoed athwart the length and breadth of young England were unable to pierce the stillness of Ffraddle's moated security. Owls murmured on its battered turrets, sparrows perched on its portcullis, cuckoos cooed all over it, heedless indeed of the turmoil and frenzied strife raging outside its feudal gates.
What a birthplace for one of history's most priceless pearls—Sarah Twig! The heart of every lover of beauty leaps and jumps and starts at the sound of that name—Sarah Twig. Why are some destined for so much while others are destined, alas! for so little? Who knows? Sarah—a rose-leaf, a crumpled atom, dropped as it were from some heavenly garden into the black times of the Merry Monarch—when, according to Bloodworthy, virtue was laughed to scorn and evil went unpunished; when, according to Follygob, virginity was a scream, and harlotry a hobby; and when, according to Sheepmeadow, homeliness was sin, and beauty but a gilded casket concealing vice and depravity unutterable.
History relates that though food was scarce and light hearts hard to find, at the birth of Sarah Twig there was no dearth of these commodities. The snow was on the ground, Follygob says—the woods and coppices and hills lay slumbering beneath a glistening white mantle. What a mind! To have written those words! It was undoubtedly Follygob's artistic style and phraseology that branded him once and for all as the master-chronicler of his time.
Sarah Twig was born in the east wing, a lofty room which can be viewed to this day by all true lovers of historical architecture. To describe it adequately is indeed difficult. Some say there was a bed in it and an early Norman window; others have it that there was no bed but a late Gothic fireplace; while a few outstanding writers insist that there was nothing at all in the room but a very old Roman washstand.[9]
The night of Sarah's birth was indeed a wild one—snow and sleet eddied and swirled around the massive structure destined to harbour one whose radiant beauty was to be a byword in all Europe. The wind, so Follygob with his incomparable style tells us, lashed itself to a livid fury against the sturdy Ffraddle turrets and mullions, whilst outside beyond the keep and raised drawbridge the beacons and camp fires stained the frost-laden air with vivid streaks of red and yellow—colours which formed the background of the Ffraddle coat of arms, thus presenting an omen to the startled inhabitants which history relates they were not slow to recognise.
Bloodworthy describes for us the plan by which Lord Ffraddle was to acquaint the village with the sex of the child. If it were a boy, red fire was to be burnt on the south turret, and if a girl, green fire was to be burnt on the north turret; but unfortunately, he goes on to tell us, owing to some misadventure blue fire was firmly burnt on all the turrets. Imagine the horror of the superstitious populace! Some left the country never to return, crying aloud that a chameleon had been born to their beloved chatelaine!
Of Sarah's youth historians tell us little. She was, apart from her beauty, a very knowing child. Often when missing from the banqueting-hall she would be discovered in the library reading and studying the political works of the period.[10] Often Lord Ffraddle was known to remark in his usual witty way, "In sooth, the child will soon have as much knowledge as her father," a sally which was invariably received with shrieks of delight by the infant Sarah, whose brilliant sense of humour was plainly apparent, even at that early age.
Her adolescence was remarkable for little save the rapid development of her supple loveliness, some idea of which can be gauged from the reproduction of Punter's famous portrait on page 74. Though painted at a somewhat later date, this masterpiece still presents us with most of the leading characteristics of its ravishing model. Note the eyes—the dreamy, cognisant expression; glance at the pretty mouth and the dainty ears. Her demeanour is obviously that of a meek and modest woman, but Punter, with his true genius, has caught that glint of inward fire, that fleeting look of shy mischief that earned for her the world-famous nickname of "Winsome Sal."
It was when she was eighteen[11] that Destiny, with inhuman cunning, caught up in his net the fragile ball of her life.