Part 1 of 2
THERE is a pretty story told of this Reign, called the story of Fair Rosamond. It relates how the King doted on Fair Rosamond, who was the loveliest girl in all the world; and how he had a beautiful Bower built for her in a Park at Woodstock; and how it was erected in a labyrinth, and could only be found by a clue of silk.
How the bad Queen Eleanor, becoming jealous of Fair Rosamond, found out the secret of the clue, and one day, appeared before her, with a dagger and a cup of poison, and left her to the choice between those deaths.
How Fair Rosamond, after shedding many piteous tears and offering many useless prayers to the cruel Queen, took the poison, and fell dead in the midst of the beautiful bower, while the unconscious birds sang gaily all around her.
Précis
Charles Dickens summarised the story of Rosamund Clifford, mistress of King Henry II in the 12th century. He tells how the King hid Rosamund at the heart of a labyrinth, but a jealous Queen Eleanor discovered it, and having tracked her down in her secret bower, gave Rosamund a choice between death by poison, or death by dagger. (58 / 60 words)
Part Two
NOW, there was a fair Rosamond, and she was (I dare say) the loveliest girl in all the world, and the King was certainly very fond of her, and the bad Queen Eleanor was certainly made jealous.
But I am afraid — I say afraid, because I like the story so much — that there was no bower, no labyrinth, no silken clue, no dagger, no poison. I am afraid fair Rosamond retired to a nunnery near Oxford, and died there, peaceably; her sister-nuns hanging a silken drapery over her tomb, and often dressing it with flowers, in remembrance of the youth and beauty that had enchanted the King when he too was young, and when his life lay fair before him.
It was dark and ended now; faded and gone. Henry Plantagenet lay quiet in the abbey church of Fontevraud, in the fifty-seventh year of his age — never to be completed — after governing England well, for nearly thirty-five years.
Précis
Dickens now candidly admits that much as he likes the legend of Rosamund, most of it is without historical foundation. Rosamund was Henry’s mistress, and Eleanor was jealous, but the rest of it is legend, from the labyrinth to the poison and the dagger; Rosamund died of natural causes in an ordinary convent. (53 / 60 words)