When we were having tea at Lyndhurst on our way back, at a hotel like a country house in a great garden, we found out that it once had been the home of your forty-second cousin, the Duc de Stacpoole, who came to England with Louis Philippe. There's his beautiful tapestry, to this day, in the dining-room, and his gorgeous magnolia tree looking wistfully into the window, as if asking why he isn't there to admire its creamy flowers, big as fat snowballs.
On our way home the rabbits of the New Forest were having a party, and were annoyed with us for coming to it without invitations. They kept "crossing our path," as people in melodramas say, so that we had to go slowly, not to run over them, and sometimes they galloped ahead, just in front of us, exactly in the middle of the road, so that we couldn't pass them. Dick kept longing to "pot" at the poor little pets, but Sir Lionel said he had lived out of England long enough to find a good deal of pleasure in life without taking that of any other creature. That isn't a very dragonish sentiment, is it?
Next day we had a delicious run (there's no other adjective which quite expresses it) through Ringwood, which is a door of the Forest, to Christchurch, another Abbey--(no, it's a Priory; but to me that's a detail) which stands looking at its own beauty in a crystal mirror. It's Augustan, not Cistercian, like Beaulieu; and it's august, as well; very noble; finer to see than many a cathedral. You and I, in other lands, have industriously travelled many miles to visit churches without half as many "features" as Christchurch. One of its quaintest is a leper's window; and a few of the beauties are the north transept, with unique "hatchet" ornamentation; a choir with wonderful old oak carvings--and the tomb of the Countess of Salisbury, of whom you read aloud to me when I was small, in a book called "Some Heroines of History." She came last in the volume because she was only a countess, and not a queen, but I cried when she said she didn't mind being killed, only being touched by a horrid, common axe, and wanted them to cut off her head with a sword. There are lots of other beautiful things in the church, too, and a nice legend about an oak beam which grew long in the night, and building materials which came down from a hill of their own accord, because one of the builders was Christ himself. That's why they named it Christchurch, you see, instead of Twyneham, as it would otherwise have been.
We stopped only long enough, after we had seen the Priory, to pay our respects to a splendid old Norman house near by, and then dashed away toward Boscombe and Bournemouth, which reminded me a little of Baden-Baden, with its gardens and fountains and running waters; its charming trees and exciting-looking shops. Just because it's modern, we didn't pause, but swept on, through scenery which suddenly degenerated. However, as I heard Sir Lionel say to Mrs. Senter: "You can't go far in this country without finding beauty"; and presently she was her own lovely self again, fair as Nature intended her to be. I mean England, not Mrs. Senter, who is lovelier than Nature made her.
We ran through miles of dense pine forests, where rhododendrons grew wild; where gulls spread silver wings and trailed coral feet a few yards above our heads; and the tang of the sea mingled with pine-balsam in our nostrils.
Soon after dull, but historic Wareham we came quite into the heart of Thomas Hardy's country. Scarcely had we turned our backs on Wareham (which I wasn't sorry to do), when I cried out at something on a distant height--something which was like a background in a mediæval picture. It was Corfe Castle, of which I'd been thinking ever since Amesbury, because of the wicked Elfrida; but the glimpse was delusive, for the dark shape hid in a moment, and we didn't see it again for a long time--not until our curving road ran along underneath the castle's towering hill. Then it soared up with imposing effect, giving an impression of grisly strength which was heightened the nearer we approached. Distance lends no enchantment to Corfe, for the castle dominates the dour, gray town that huddles round it, and is never nobler than when you tap for admittance at its gates.
I tried to think, as we waited to go in, how young Edward felt--Edward the Martyr--when he stood at the gates, waiting to go in and visit his half-brother whom he loved, and his step-mother Elfrida, whom he hated. He never left the castle alive, poor boy! Afterward, in the ruins, I went to the window where Elfrida was supposed to have watched the young king's coming, before she ran down to the gates and directed the murder which was planned to give her own son the kingdom. It made the story seem almost too realistic, because, as you often tell me, my imagination carries me too fast and too far. There's nothing easier than to send it back ten or twelve centuries in the same number of minutes--and it's such a cheap way of travelling, too!
Corfe is in Dorset, you must know, a county as different from others as I am different from the real Ellaline Lethbridge, and the castle is at the very centre of the Isle of Purbeck, which makes it seem even more romantic than it would otherwise. I'm afraid it wasn't really even begun in the days of Elfrida, or "Ælfrith," who had only a hunting lodge there; but if people _will_ point out her window, am I to blame if I try to make firm belief attract shy facts? Besides, facts are such dull dogs in the historical kennels until they've been taught a few tricks.
Anyhow, Corfe is Norman, at worst, and not only did King John keep much treasure there, but one supposes there's some hidden still. If I could only have found it, I'd be buying a castle for you and me to live in. Sir Lionel thinks that I, as his ward, will live in his castle; and he was telling me at Corfe about the Norman tower at Graylees. But, alas, I knew better. Oh, I didn't mean that "alas"! Consider it erased; and the other silly things I wrote you the other night, please. They're all so _useless_.
There were loads of interesting prisoners in Corfe Castle, at one time or another, knights from France, and fair ladies, the fairest of all, the beautiful "Damsel of Brittany," who had claims to the English crown. And kings have visited there; and in Cromwell's day a lady and her daughters successfully defended it in a great siege. It was such a splendid and brave defence that it seems sad, even to this day, to think how the castle fell after all, a year later, and to see the great stones and masses of masonry lying, far below the height, exactly where they rolled when Parliament ordered the conquered towers to be blown up by gunpowder. The Bankes family, who still own Corfe, must be proud of that Lady Bankes, their ancestress, who held the castle. And isn't it nice, the Bankes still have the old keys, where they live, at Kingston Lacy?
You like Thomas Hardy's "Hand of Ethelberta" next to "Far from the Madding Crowd." Well, Coomb Castle in that book is really Corfe Castle. I told you we were in Hardy country. After Wareham, and not very far away, at Wool, is an old, old manor-house of the Turbervilles, turned into a farmhouse now. You don't need to be reminded of what Hardy made of that, I know.
We lunched at an interesting old inn, like all the rest of the ancient houses of Corfe, slate-roofed, grim and gray. Then we coasted down the steep hill to the plain again, making for Swanage. It was dusty, but we weren't sorry, because, just when we were travelling rather fast, on a perfectly clear road, a policeman popped out like a Jack-in-the-Box, apparently from nowhere. You could tell by his face he was a "trappist," as Dick calls the motor-spies, and though Sir Lionel wasn't really going beyond the legal limit, he glared at our number as if he meant mischief. But that number-plate had thoughtfully masked itself in dust, so with all the will in the world he could work us no harm after our backs were turned. Once in a while it does seem as if Nature sympathized with the poor, maligned motorist whom nobody loves, and is willing to throw her protection over him. It would be like tempting Providence to polish off dust or mud, in such circumstances, wouldn't it?
My face was a different matter, though, and I longed to polish it. Before we got to Swanage, it felt--even under chiffon--just as an iced cake must feel. Only the cake, fortunately for its contour, never needs to smile.
We were going to Swanage because of the caves--Tilly Whim Caves. Did you ever hear of them, Parisienne mamma? Small blame to you, if not, because one can't know everything; but they are worth seeing; and the Swanage harbour is a little dream. The town is good, too. Old-world, and very, very respectable-looking, as if it were full of long-established lawyers and clergymen, yet not dull, like Wareham, which was important in Saxon days, long before Swanage was born or thought of. It's "Knollsea" in the "Hand of Ethelberta." Do you remember? And Alfred the Great had a victory close by--so close, that in a storm the Danish ships blew into what is the town now, as if they had been butterflies with their wings wet.