THE PORT OF LYNN
This was the beginning of the famous year. I say famous because, to me
and to certain others, it was certainly a year eventful, while to the
people of the town and the county round it was the year of the spa
which began, ran a brief course, and terminated, all in one summer.
Let me therefore speak for a little about the place where these things
happened. It is not a mushroom or upstart town of yesterday but on the
other hand a town of venerable antiquity with many traditions which
may be read in books by the curious. It is important on account of its
trade though it is said that in former days its importance was much
greater.
I have sailed over many seas: I have put in at many ports: I have
taken in cargoes of many countries--the ways of sailors I have found
much the same everywhere. And as for the food and the drink and the
buildings I say that Lynn is behind none. Certainly the port of London
whether at Wapping or at Limehouse or Shadwell cannot show anything so
fine as the market place of Lynn or St. Margaret's church or our
customhouse. Nor have I found anywhere, people more civil of speech
and more obliging and well disposed, than in my own town; in which,
apart from the sailors and their quarters, the merchants and
shipowners are substantial: trade is always brisk: the port is always
lively: continually there is a coming and a going: sometimes, week
after week, one ship arrives and another ship puts out: the yards are
always busy: the hammer and the anvil resound all day long:
carpenters, rope makers, boat builders, block makers, sail makers, all
the people wanted to fit out a ship--they say that a ship is like a
woman, in always wanting something--are at work without intermission
all the year round from five in the morning till eight in the evening.
They stand at good wages: they live well: they dress warm: they drink
of the best. It is a city of great plenty. Wine there is of the most
generous, to be had at reasonable price--have I not myself brought
home cargoes from Lisbon of Spanish and Portuguese--strong and
heady--rich and sweet; and from Bordeaux of right claret? All the
things that come from abroad are here in abundance, brought hither by
our ships and distributed by our barges up the river and its
tributaries through eight countries at least, serving the towns of
Peterborough, Ely, Stamford, Bedford, St. Ives, Huntingdon, St. Neots,
Northampton, Cambridge, Bury St. Edmund's, and Thetford. We send them
not only wine but also coals (which come to us, sea-borne, from
Newcastle), deal and timber from Norway and the Baltic, iron and
implements; sugar, lemons, spices, tea (but there is little of that
infusion taken in the county), turpentine, and I know not what: and we
receive for export wheat, barley, oats and grain of all kinds.
In other places you may hear lamentations that certain imported
luxuries have given out: the lemons will fail so that the punch is
spoiled: or the nutmegs give out--which is a misfortune for the
pudding: or the foreign wine has been all consumed. Our cellars and
our warehouses, however, are always full, there is always wine of
every kind: there are always stores of everything that the cook can
want for his most splendid banquet.
Nor are we less fortunate in our food. There is excellent mutton
fattened in the Marshland: the bacon of Norfolk is famous: there are
no geese like the geese of the fens--they are kept in farmhouses, each
in its own hutch, and all driven out to feed in the fens and the
ditches of the fens. Every day you may see the boy they call the
gozzard driving them out in the morning and bringing them home in the
evening. Then, since all the country on the west side is lowland
reclaimed from the sea, it is, like all such land, full of ponds and
haunted by starlings and ducks, widgeon, teal and other wild birds
innumerable, which are shot, decoyed, and caught in great numbers. Add
to this that the reclaimed land is most fertile and yields abundantly
of wheat and barley, fruit and vegetables: and that fish are found in
plenty in the Wash and outside and you will own that the town is a
kind of promised land, where everything that the heart of man can
desire is plentiful and cheap and where the better sort are rich and
comfortable and the baser sort are in good case and contented.
Another circumstance, which certain scholars consider fortunate for
Lynn, is that the modern town abounds with ancient buildings, walls,
towers, arches, churches, gateways, fragments which proclaim its
antiquity and speak of its former importance. You think, perhaps, that
a plain and simple sea captain has no business to know anything about
matters which concern scholars. That is a reasonable objection. The
Lord forbid that I should speak as if I knew anything of my own
reading. I am but a plain sailor: I have spent most of my life
navigating a merchantman. This is an honourable condition. Had I to
choose another life upon the world I would desire of Providence no
higher station and no happier lot. A sea captain is king: his vessel
is an island over which he rules: he is a servant yet not in a state
of servitude: he is a dependent yet is independent: he has no cares
about money for he is well paid: he keeps what hours he pleases:
dresses as he likes: eats and drinks as he likes: if he carries
passengers he has society. No. Let me not even seem to be pretending
to the learning of a scholar. I do but repeat the things which my
father was wont to repeat in my hearing. He was for forty years master
of the Grammar school; a master of arts of Christ's college,
Cambridge: a learned scholar in Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Chaldee: and,
like many of his calling, an antiquary and one who was most happy when
he was poring over old manuscripts in the Archives of the Guildhall,
and amassing materials which he did not live to put together for the
history of Lynn Regis, sometime Lynn Episcopi. The collections made by
him still lie among the chests where the corporation keep their
papers. They will doubtless be found there at some future time and
will serve for some other hand engaged upon the same work.
It is not to be expected that among a trading and a shipping community
there should be much curiosity on such matters as the past history of
their borough: the charter which it obtained from kings; the creation
of a mayor: the destruction of the monasteries when the glorious
Reformation restored the sunlight of the gospel and of freedom to this
happy land. For the most part my father worked without encouragement
save from the vicar of St. Margaret's, the Reverend Mark Gentle,
S.T.P., to whose scholarly mind the antiquities and charters and
leases of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, were of small
account indeed compared with a newly found coin of an obscure Roman
usurper, or an inscription on a Roman milestone, or the discovery of a
Roman urn. Yet my father would willingly discourse upon the subject
and, indeed, I think that little by little he communicated to me the
whole of his knowledge, so that I became that rare creature, a sailor
versed in antiquity and history: one to whom the streets and old
buildings of Lynn spoke in a language unknown by the people, even
unheard by them.
It pleases me to recall the tall form of my father: his bent
shoulders: his wig for the most part awry: his round spectacles; his
thin face. In school he was a figure of fear, always terrible,
wielding the rod of office with justice Rhadamanthine, and demanding,
with that unrelenting alternative, things impossible in grammar. In
school hours he was a very Jupiter, a thundering Jupiter: our school
was an ancient hall with an open timber roof in which his voice rolled
and echoed backwards and forwards. Nor did he spare his only son. In
consequence of some natural inability to cope with the niceties of
syntax I was often compelled to become a warning and an admonition to
the rest. I have sometimes, since those days, in considering things
during the night-watch, asked myself why men of tender hearts force
their children to undergo this fierce discipline of grammar--a thing
instantly forgotten when a boy goes to sea: and I have thought that
perhaps it was invented and encouraged by divines in order that boys
might learn something of the terrors of the law divine. Out of school,
however, no child ever had a parent more indulgent or more
affectionate. The post of schoolmaster is honourable and one that
should be desired, yet I have sometimes wished, when the disagreeable
moments of swishing were upon me, that the hand of the executioner had
belonged to some other boy's father--say, the father of Sam Semple.
I will tell you how he used to talk. I remember one day--it might be
yesterday--he was standing on the Lady's Mount and looking down upon
the gardens and fields which now lie between the ancient walls and the
modern town. "Look, boy," he said, "you see fields and gardens: on
those fields stood formerly monasteries and convents: these gardens
were once enclosed--you may still discern some of the stone walls
which surrounded them, for monk and friar. All the friars were here,
so great was the wealth of the town. On that green field behind the
church of St. Nicholas was the house of the Austin Friars: some
fragments of these buildings have I discovered built into the houses
on the west side of the field: I should like to pull down the modern
houses in order to display those fragments: almost at our feet lay the
house of the Black Friars, yonder to the south, between the road to
the gate and the river Var, was the friary of the White Friars or
Carmelites: there is the tower of the Grey Friars, who were
Franciscans. On the south side of St. Margaret's there are walls and
windows, with carved mullions and arches--they belong to a college of
priests or perhaps a Benedictine House--there must have been
Benedictines in the town; or perhaps they belonged to a nunnery: many
nunneries stood beside parish churches.
"This is part of the wall of the town. 'Tis a pity that it should fall
into decay, but when walls are no longer wanted for defence they are
neglected. First the weather loosens the stones of the battlements; or
perhaps they fall into the moat: or the people take them away for
building. I wonder how much of the wall of Lynn is built into the
churches and the houses and the garden walls; then the whole face of
the wall disappears; then if it is a Roman wall there is left a core
of concrete as in London wall which I have seen here and there where
the houses are not built against it. And here is a point which I
cannot get over. The wall of Lynn is two miles long: that of London is
three miles long, as I am credibly informed by Stow and others. Was
then, the town of Lynn at any time able to raise and to defend a wall
two miles in length? It seems incredible. Yet why build a wall longer
than could be defended? Were these fields and gardens once streets
between the religious houses? Certain it is that Lynn Episcopi, as it
was then called, was formerly a very busy place yet, I apprehend, more
busy than at present in proportion only to the increased wealth and
population of the country."
So he would talk to me, I suppose, because he could never find anybody
else who would listen to him. Those who read this page will very
likely resemble the company to whom my father ventured upon such
discourse of ancient things. They would incline their heads; they
would take a drink: they would sigh: they would say, "Why, sir, since
you say so, doubtless it is so. No one is likely to dispute the point,
but if you think upon it the time is long ago and ... I think,
neighbours, the wind has shifted a point to the nor'east."
The town preserves, in spite of neglect and oblivion, more of the
appearance of the age than most towns. The Guildhall, where they show
the sword and the silver cup of King John, is an ancient and
noteworthy building: there are the old churches: there are almshouse
and hospitals: there is a customhouse which the Hollanders enviously
declare must have been brought over from their country and set up
here, so much does it resemble their own buildings. Our streets are
full of remains: here a carving in marble: here a window of ancient
shape, cut in stone: here a piece of carved work from some ancient
chantry chapel: here a deserted and mouldering court: here a house
overhanging, gabled, with carved front: here a courtyard with an
ancient house built round it; and with the narrow streets such as one
finds only in the most ancient parts of our ancient cities. We have
still our winding lanes with their irregularities: houses planted
sideways as well as fronting the street: an irregular alignment:
gables instead of a flat coping: casement windows not yet transformed
by the modern sash: our old taverns; our old walls; our old market
places; and the ancient bridges which span the four streams running
through the midst of our town. By the riverside you may find the
sailors and the craftsmen who belong to a seaport: at the customhouse
you may meet the merchants and the shippers: in the market places you
may find the countrymen and countrywomen--they talk an uncouth
language and their manners are rough, but they are honest: and if you
go to the church of St. Margaret's or St. Nicholas any day for morning
prayers but especially on Sunday you may find among the congregation
maidens and matrons in rich attire, the former as beautiful as in any
town or country may be met; the latter stately and dignified and
gracious withal.