Day 8 -- "Chips... chips... chips..."
Have what Lucia (in Mapp and Lucia books) would call a "leading", to head back to Corfe Castle this morning -- though concerned about how long it might take compared to the places I really want to visit today -- and some uncomfortable awareness that it's 800 yards uphill from the NT parking lot to the castle itself. But I still decide to head out there. And what do you know, East Chaldon -- where STW and her partner Valentine Ackland are buried -- is along the road! I never would have found it if I hadn't headed back this way.
Fortunately there's an empty pub car park where I can leave the Audi while I walk to the churchyard. I think I may have identified the place where "Miss Green's" cottage may have been (STW and VA lived there for a while, but it was destroyed in the War) -- there seems to be a house of the right vintage to have been a replacement.
Birds are yapping up a storm -- lots of lovely lacey wildflowers, just a gentle embroidery of color shot through the grass. Churchyard is quite tidy, with grass freshly cut. VA and STW stone in the quietest corner -- well, the corner farthest away from the church, under the incessant braying of the rooks (here's STW's own description of it from her letters, found once I got home:
It was a brilliant afternoon, with a wind from the sea, whirling cloud-shadows across the very green churchyard grass; and the rookery was in full shout, with parent rooks flustering overhead feeding their newly hatched young. I planted the snowdrops [on VA's grave], absorbed in industry, then, feeling I would like a rest, I looked round for somewhere to sit on. There, all ready to be sat on, was the stone slab, rather well-cut, with everything of names and dates on it, and Valentine's choice of non omnis moriar -- everything except the date of my death.
And as I sat down on it, William, I felt the most amazing righteous joy, as if I were doing just what I should, par excellence what I should; and that here was my indisputable right place. It was the first time since her death that I have felt that slightly rowdy emotion of joy." --STW to William Maxwell, 30 April 1971)
The rooks donate two feathers -- one for me to place on the stone slab, one for myself. I brush away a little dried grass, but as I said, things are kept quite tidy here. No need to pray for the peace of these souls, since it's so clear that they have -- and deserve -- peace. After moodling around a little, I work my way back to the front. Is this Miss Green (whose cottage they loved so much)? Date is about right...
Walk back to the car in a haze of serenity. STW so sharp-sighted but generous. A person I hope to have a drink with in heaven. As I reach the car and am writing up a few notes, I hear something that sounds like the clopping of a horse's hooves. Lo and behold, it is a beautiful gray dappled horse being ridden down East Chaldon main street.
Have idea of taking train from Norden Park & Ride to castle, as I get closer to Corfe, but it turns out the next train comes in almost an hour. Get lost again -- Mrs. Longford refuses to relinquish Corfe as a destination. Finally shut her up by parking in NT car park again. She obstinately refuses to conduct me anywhere else. Vengefully, I plot my own route to Tintinhull via Yeovil -- and feel very smug to reach there safely.
Pretty walk through fruit orchard and across street to garden, chopped into several "rooms." I wait quietly for birds, standing on their own particular stone to drink from the fountain court. Very well-cared for garden -- that should be a given, shouldn't it, but sometimes it isn't. The pool court is lovely -- if all their tadpoles come to fruition, they will be Biblically awash in frogs. Blue and green dragonflies -- always one of each -- amorously twined, like vibrantly colored Lego blocks. Yellow irises (which I usually don't much like) work very well against the heavy green water. The water lilies, like all good water lilies, look entirely fake. Must get some of those very dark purple alliums next year for my own garden.
There is also a pleasantly insistent smell of melting cheese. Once my visit to the garden is over, I follow it to its source, the "Crown and Victoria" down the road -- and bespeak a mushroom and cheese omelette. (There is an upsetting daily special, "slowly roasted faggots", which I don't have the courage to ask about. Later discover that this is a disgusting sort of pork pate sausage dish.)
The table next to me is filled with half a dozen ladies who lunch. When their plates start to arrive, there is an approving susurration among them: "Chips... chips... chips..."
Forgot to mention that I depart Tintinhull steps ahead of substantial influx of German teenagers, pouring out of bus like clowns. Bear this in mind as we go forward.
Nice man at Tintinhull reception has provided me with directions to next stop, Lytes Cary, which would have been perfect if I had followed them correctly. During familiar navigational farce that follows, Mrs. Longford bobs to the surface again, and while I can't get her to acknowledge the existence of a place called Lytes Cary, she does consent to guide me to nearby village of Kingsden, where the beloved brown signs of the National Trust beckon me in.
Lytes Cary is a nice, creaky old medieval house. On the front table is the Herbal of Henry Lyte, compiled in the 16th century. There are also two curious leather homunculi on either side of the fireplace -- they are about three-quarters of the size of a person, and were apparently brought to table when there was an odd number of people dining, to even things up. They are called "the good companions" -- I wouldn't care to think about what they do at night when everyone is gone.
Upstairs, there's a great set of engravings of "the Idle and Industrious Apprentice." There's also a lovely saucy Elizabethan lady near the fireplace -- alas, the room steward does not know who she is or how she got here. There is beautiful glass in the chapel -- the Lord's supper particular fine and detailed -- made in the 19th century from older glass.
And here come the German kids again! Who in their right minds would take eighty teenagers around historic gardens of Britain? Retreat to teashop for an ice cream, waiting for them to pass.
Forgot -- earlier, a German woman asking, upon seeing the court outside the window, if this cruuu--kette is anything like creeek-it?
Gardens lovely, including great topiary, but too many teenagers.
More village names: Catsgore. Creech. Queen Camel (Queen Margaret, consort to Edward II, as if she didn't have enough trouble), Rattery, Ryme Intrinseca.
Will be ready to leave this landscape tomorrow -- I've rather had my fill of rolling empty green hills.