152 NOTES—ORIGINAL AND SELECTED.
restoration of the Lodge excited very considerable public interest and a large
number of newspapers, as well metropolitan as provincial, took notice of the
affair in paragraphs and short "leaders." As a specimen, a leader which
appeared in the London Daily Telegraph may be quoted :—"That much-
maligned body, the Corporation of London, acts as the custodian of many
places of great historical interest in the immediate vicinity of the Metropolis,
and its bitterest critics can find little fault with the way in which it carries
out this important public trust. It is now engaged in restoring the famous
Hunting Lodge at Chingford, which for the last few years has been the home
of the Epping Forest Museum, so as to provide double the present accommo-
dation for the Essex Field Club's exhibits. The intention is to reorganise the
collection, and possibly supplement it with a loan of art objects, and thus
make it, so to speak, an annexe of the museum now being erected at Stratford.
The scheme is one that will commend itself to all antiquarians, and will
greatly enhance the interest of the Hunting Lodge to the thousands who visit
it year by year. Time has dealt very kindly with the fine old building, which
takes its name from the Maiden Queen who constantly honoured it with her
capricious presence when she hunted the hart in Epping Forest. Elizabeth,
who had a strong taste for the classics, and more than the ordinary share of
feminine vanity, delighted to hear her courtiers address her as Diana of the
Woods, and there are portraits of her still extant in which she carries the bow
of Artemis and is accompanied by her faithful hounds. But the Tudor
Queen was a thoroughly good sportswoman, in spite of all her affectation,
and even at the age of fifty-seven, she indulged in the pleasures of the chase.
Local tradition, indeed, has it that she used to ride up the massive staircase at
the Chingford Hunting Lodge to the great chamber above, and alight by the
door at a raised place which for centuries has been known as 'the horse
block.' The feat was successfully performed by a forester on an untrained
pony seventy years ago, and the solid oak stairs, which are about six feet wide
and run in fours, with six broad landings to the twenty-four steps, would still
bear the weight of the heaviest charger. There is nothing impossible in the
legend, therefore, and it is not at all improbable that the daughter of
Henry VIII., who, in spite of her devotion to dress and her passion for
colossal ruffs, farthingales, quiltings, slashings, and embroideries, could rap
out tremendous oaths, and was so forgetful of strict etiquette as to box a
courtier's ears and tickle the back of Leicester's neck when he knelt to receive
his earldom, should show off her horsemanship by riding her palfrey up the
staircase. The Lodge itself, with its gable ends, high-pitched roof, and old-
fashioned fireplace in the basement, commanding a fine view across Epping
Forest to High Beach and Buckhurst hill, makes an ideal museum, where the
setting is as worthy of a visit as the exhibits themselves."