continued from part 4
On our way to Windsor Castle, I got to see another facet of English life--here there was more space than there had been in the suburbs; the English gardens and quiet trails that British poets immortalized in poetry emerged here.
A girl riding her horse amid all the cars on the small road. The first glorious flames of autumn. The ivy. The magpies. The four distant cows.
And we actually went past Eton College--DE Eton College. All red brick history and exactly what I'd been reading a few days ago in the memoirs of one of my favourite writers! C.S. Lewis's world, here I am, on tiptoe and in awe, but here!
We popped into a Costa cafe for a quiet tea spell and more poppyseed-lemon deliciousness (I told you it was a repeated motif!) before exploring the beautiful streets and Windsor Castle, just opposite over the water adorned with impossibly white swans like toy figurines on a dollhouse glass lake.
Windsor Castle was so magnificent it transcended its inevitable touristy aspect--at least, for me. No photography was allowed so I stored up all those sights and sensations feeling like I would burst, without the usual vent of the shutter button which dilutes, if preserves, the experience. I learnt to recognize a new sensation which I called 'smallering' for lack of a better word--that feeling when you look at something vast and amazing and above all gloriously beautiful, and feel yourself shrinking like an effervescent vitamin tablet dissolving in water amid a bubbly fuzz of awe.
When I was little, I spent a disproportionate amount of time creating a fantasy medieval world peopled by anthropomorphic cats and dogs with impossibly long necks and enormous eyes. I couldn't draw humans to save my life, so I created this species for my stories, which I wrote and illustrated in almost all of my spare time, and was painfully shy of showing to anyone (except for my long-suffering cousin, who was an indiscriminately positive critic and proved herself one of the nicest people I know.) After all, my Chinese tuition teacher once mistook my beloved knights and ladies for giraffes--understandably, as I now see. Castles, duels, balls, escapes from turret windows with rope ladders, and a generous supply of forests were staples to my stories. I would have happily gone back to the medieval era if I had the choice of a time travelling machine. Heck, who cared about modern plumbing or the Black Death?
So it felt strangely unreal when I stepped into Windsor Castle. As if I had stepped into one of my stories. I wouldn't have been surprised if I had found myself turned into an anthropomorphic cat with a two foot long neck and eyes like tennis balls--provided, of course, that I was properly dressed in medieval clothes.
I think I shall always have a fascination with castles, and a secret longing to try living in them--especially when I discovered that the valley I was looking down at was the moat.
I'm not sure what I was expecting, but something along the lines of cold dirty water and maybe a shark or two.
Certainly not a valley this huge, especially since it had been turned into a garden.
I'm not sure what I was expecting, but something along the lines of cold dirty water and maybe a shark or two.
Certainly not a valley this huge, especially since it had been turned into a garden.
Inside St. George's Chapel, there were countless plaques to commemorate the dead, their brassy surfaces worn dull and smooth by centuries' worth of footsteps, so you had to crouch and crane your head to read the engraved words. Next to the great buttery coloured walls, a cat basked in the sun and licked one furry leg carelessly--it was just another wall to him.
I stepped onto the plain marble slab for Henry VIII and Jane Seymour. It felt strange that a name so indelibly marked in history was so simply written here. I thought of all I had read about this man, all he had done, and felt rather sober and almost sorry for him; remembered that square, flaccid, curiously impersonal face with its self-satisfied expression. So this was Henry the Eighth.
There were so many kings and queens there that I got quite desensitized; or maybe my limited knowledge of British history gave out. I remembered the impressive monument to Princess Charlotte, whose death in childbirth led to Victoria's eventual ascent to the throne. What was more striking to me, however, were the many plaques inscribed in honour or gratefulness to the people who never appeared in history books; a talented and gracious man who lived his life in quiet service to mankind rather than in Court power; a nurse companion who had been a blessing to the princess she served; three organists who played on the great Chapel organ.
Which reminds me of the adorably pathetic John Chivery in Little Dorrit, who consoled his unrequited love for Amy by composing epithets for himself ("Here lie the mortal remains Of JOHN CHIVERY, Never anything worth mentioning, Who died about the end of the year one thousand eight hundred and twenty-six, Of a broken heart, Requesting with his last breath that the word AMY might be inscribed over his ashes, which was accordingly directed to be done, By his afflicted Parents.") It's not such a bad idea to consider what your gravestone will look like while you're alive.
The splendour of the State Apartments was a true first for me, born and bred an urban girl among the very much postmodern architecture of Singapore. Gazing speechlessly around I began to be conscious of a certain feeling. Under the awe, under the 'smallering', I was for the first time able to understand what I never could or had before; what E. L. Conigsburg coined 'a proud taste for scarlet and miniver' in her book of the same title. Its description of Eleanor of Aquitaine, a woman whose passion for luxury and beauty shaped her life, had never seemed relatable to me before. But with the blazing heights of man-made beauty and glory before me, I understood the same craving, the same sensuous desire to grasp all this in my hands, keep it around me like an ermine cloak, steep myself and my everyday in it like a fruitcake raisin in brandy. There! I'm sure I spoiled the dramatic effect of that sentence wit that analogy.
A proud taste for scarlet and miniver. Just as well I was born humbly and lived humbly in the 21st century!
The world is even bigger, and even more beautiful, than I thought I could imagine.
to be continued in part 6