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[Illustration: ELY AT EVENTIDE]
THROUGH EAST ANGLIA IN A MOTOR CAR
by
J. E. VINCENT
With Sixteen Illustrations in Colour by Frank Southgate, R.B.A.
New York: Mcclure, Phillips & Co.
London: Methuen & Co.
1907
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
WINTER. [OXFORD] TO CAMBRIDGE, NEWMARKET, AND IPSWICH 1
CHAPTER II
WINTER. IPSWICH TO NORWICH VIA WOODBRIDGE, BECCLES,
LOWESTOFT, AND YARMOUTH 30
CHAPTER III
WINTER. NORWICH TO LONDON BY ROMAN ROAD 56
CHAPTER IV
SPRING. THROUGH THE HEART OF EAST ANGLIA 70
CHAPTER V
SPRING. [IN NORWICH] AND TO ELY AND CAMBRIDGE 106
CHAPTER VI
LONDON, FELIXSTOWE--DUNWICH, FELIXSTOWE 138
CHAPTER VI--(_continued_)
FELIXSTOWE, BAWDSEY, WOODBRIDGE, IPSWICH, DUNMOW, AND LONDON 167
CHAPTER VII
LATE SUMMER. COLCHESTER AND EASTWARDS 181
CHAPTER VIII
COLCHESTER AND GAINSBOROUGH'S COUNTRY 229
CHAPTER IX
FROM COLCHESTER WESTWARDS--COGGESHALL, BRAINTREE,
WITHAM, INGATESTONE, MARGARETTING, DANBURY HILL,
MALDON, TIPTREE, MESSING, AND COLCHESTER 250
CHAPTER IX--(_continued_)
COLCHESTER TO THE EXTRAORDINARY "DENE-HOLES" AT
GRAYS, ESSEX 271
CHAPTER X
IN SPRING. TROUBLES MADE EASY 292
CHAPTER XI
GREAT AMBITIONS CHEERFULLY RELINQUISHED. HARLESTON
TO CROMER VIA BUNGAY, BECCLES, LOWESTOFT, GREAT
YARMOUTH, CAISTER-BY-YARMOUTH, AND NORWICH 306
CHAPTER XII
A PRIORY--GREAT HOUSES AND THE FENS 335
CHAPTER XIII
FROM KING'S LYNN AS CENTRE 360
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
ELY AT EVENTIDE _Frontispiece_
PAGE
CAMBRIDGE--KING'S COLLEGE AND THE CAM 5
WOODBRIDGE STREET 36
SOUTHWOLD HARBOUR 40
FISHING BOATS AT LOWESTOFT 44
NORWICH MARKET PLACE 54
IPSWICH PORT 70
DUNWICH AND DESOLATION 160
ABBEY GATEWAY--BURY ST. EDMUNDS 300
BECCLES FROM THE WAVENEY 314
YARMOUTH FROM BREYDON 320
CHURCH STREET, CROMER 327
BLAKENEY, A CHARACTERISTIC LANDSCAPE 335
WALSINGHAM PRIORY 342
HEATH, NEAR SANDRINGHAM 382
BLICKLING HALL 384
PRACTICAL OBSERVATIONS
Few practical suggestions are needed by the motorist in East Anglia--a
district not presenting many difficulties. Those which are deemed necessary
are here prefixed to the whole body of the text.
ABBREVIATIONS
R. signifies that there is a garage capable of doing
moderate repairs.
R. A. signifies that the facilities for repair are
abundant.
P. signifies that petrol can be purchased, but it has
not been considered needful to state this where the
existence of a garage renders a supply of petrol
certain.
CHAPTER I
CAMBRIDGE, NEWMARKET, BURY, AND IPSWICH
ROADS Cambridge to Newmarket, mostly flat--not good.
Newmarket to Bury St. Edmunds, fair. Bury St. Edmunds
to Ipswich, poor and very sinuous.
HILLS A sharp rise to Newmarket. Some small ups and
downs between Newmarket and Bury St. Edmunds. Some
small ups and downs between Ipswich and Stowmarket.
DISTANCES Cambridge (R.A.)to Newmarket (R.), 13-1/4.
Newmarket to Bury St. Edmunds (R.), 14. Bury St.
Edmunds via Stowmarket (R.), to Ipswich (R.A.), 25-1/2.
_N.B._--_Great care is necessary in driving through Ipswich, owing to
narrow streets and fast tramcars._
CHAPTER II
IPSWICH TO NORWICH, VIA BECCLES, LOWESTOFT, AND YARMOUTH
ROADS Fair to Blythburgh, poor thence to Beccles, fair
for rest of journey.
HILL A sharp ascent on leaving Ipswich.
DISTANCES Ipswich to Woodbridge (R.), 8. Woodbridge to
Wickham Market (R.), 4-3/4. Wickham Market to
Saxmundham (R.), 8.
_Detour_ to Aldeburgh recommended. Turn to right at
Farnham, 2 short of Saxmundham. To Aldeburgh (R.), 7.
Rejoin Blythburgh road at Yoxford. Yoxford from
Aldeburgh, 9. From Saxmundham, 3-1/2. Saxmundham to
Yoxford, 3-1/2. Yoxford, via Darsham to Blythburgh,
3-3/4.
_Detour_ to Southwold (R.), 6 advised. Return same
route of going to Beccles, or by Reydon, Wangford and
Blyford, and then to Beccles road, thus adding 4-1/4 in
all.
Blythburgh to Beccles (R. A.), 9. Beccles to Lowestoft
(R. A.), 10. Lowestoft to Great Yarmouth (R. A.), 10.
Great Yarmouth to Norwich (R. A.), direct route 19-1/2.
CHAPTER III
NORWICH TO LONDON BY ROMAN ROAD
ROADS The surface is reasonably good, and the
milestones are legible so long as the road is in
Norfolk. On entering Suffolk the milestones are often
found illegible, and the surface of the road becomes
noticeably worse. The main road from Colchester to
London, via the East End of London, is of fairly good
quality, but traffic is very troublesome during the
later part.
HILLS Between Norwich and Ipswich are no hills of at
all a serious character on this route, except when
surface is very soft. At Stratford St. Mary, on
crossing the river towards Colchester, is a fairly
stiff ascent, and the Colchester vicinity is hilly, but
not difficult for cars of moderate power.
_N.B._--Great care should always be observed in leaving
Norwich, the streets being narrow, crooked and full of
risk, and the way difficult to find.
DISTANCES Norwich to London (Marble Arch), 114-3/4.
Norwich to Long Stratton, 10-1/4. Long Stratton to
Scole, 9-1/4. Scole to Thornton Parva, 4-3/4. Thornton
Parva to Thwaite, 2-3/4. Thwaite to Claydon, 11-3/4.
Claydon to Ipswich (R. A.), 4. Ipswich to Colchester
(R. A.), 6-3/4. Colchester to Chelmsford (R. A.),
13-1/4. Chelmsford to Romford (R.), 14-3/4. Romford to
Stratford, 8. Stratford to Marble Arch, 6-3/4.
CHAPTER IV
THROUGH THE HEART OF EAST ANGLIA
ROADS Main roads throughout. Good in surface, for the
most part very straight and free from cross-roads, so
that high speeds may be enjoyed with safety.
HILLS None worthy of mention.
DISTANCES Royston to Newmarket (R.), 24. Newmarket to
Thetford (R.), 20-1/4. Thetford to Attleborough (R.),
14. Attleborough to Wymondham (R.), 6. Wymondham to
Norwich (R. A.), 9.
_Note._--This was merely an afternoon drive in East Anglia, preceded by a
morning spent in reaching it by car; but it is not the less likely to be
suitable to other motorists for that reason.
CHAPTER V
NORWICH TO ELY AND CAMBRIDGE
ROADS Fair at outset. Worse on approaching Ely.
HILLS None of any moment, but no monotony of level
until reaching Fordham.
DISTANCES Norwich to Watton (P.), 8. Watton to Brandon,
13. [N.B.--This is a by-way to find which turn sharply
to left on reaching the Lynn and Thetford road. The
distance is approximate.] Brandon to Mildenhall (P.),
9-1/4. Mildenhall to Fordham, 6-1/4. Fordham to Soham
(R.), 3-1/4. Soham to Ely (R.), 5-1/4. Ely to Cambridge
(R. A.), 16. Cambridge to Royston (R.), 13-1/2.
_Caution._--Great care should be taken to ascertain the right exit from
Norwich.
_Note._--This is not a full day's drive, and in fact left me 70 miles to
travel, but it is a convenient exit from East Anglia westwards. From
Royston to London is 42-1/4.
CHAPTER VI
LONDON, FELIXSTOWE, AND DUNWICH
IMPORTANT NOTE. _The route out of London Eastwards
given below under "Distances" is believed to be
incomparably the best in that direction. It is
therefore given with great particularity of
instruction, the distances having been mechanically
recorded. Without care it is easily missed on the
inward journey._
ROADS Vile, with crumbling surface of gravel, in Epping
Forest. Good from Chelmsford to Felixstowe. Fair from
Felixstowe to Saxmundham. Farm tracks were tried beyond
Saxmundham. They were found soft, rough, but not
injurious to tires.
HILLS Worthy of respect in Epping Forest, owing to bad
surface, round Colchester, on leaving Ipswich, and on
leaving Dunwich.
DISTANCES AND SPECIAL DIRECTIONS. Oxford Circus to
Epping, 22.7. Proceed via Regent Street, Langham Place,
Portland Place, Park Crescent, to Euston Road; turn to
the right and go straight on past King's Cross Station;
turn to left into York Road, which follow to tramway
lines in Camden Road; here turn to the right and follow
tramway lines across Holloway Road into Seven Sisters
Road; continue to follow tramway lines to "Manor
House," and there, taking the right-hand fork of tram
lines, go on to red brick structure in the centre of
the road. Here incline to the left and follow tram
lines through Tottenham High Road to Edmonton (9.9),
and go straight on to Ponder's End. Here at "The Two
Brewers" turn to the right, go over a level crossing at
Ponder's End. Beyond the crossing the road passes
through fields, but two gates less than 3/4 of a mile
apart must be watched for. Go straight on to Chingford
(13.8). Look out for Loughton and Epping sign-post,
which points to Whitehall Lane, and at the end of
Whitehall Lane (15.4), turn to the left and proceed to
Buckhurst Hill. Then bear to the right at the next
fork, where sign-post directs to Loughton (17.6), and
Epping.
_Epping to Felixstowe._--Epping (R.) to Ongar (R.),
7-1/2. Ongar to Chelmsford (R.), 11-3/4. Chelmsford to
Colchester (R. A.), 23-1/4. Colchester to Ipswich (R.
A.), 16-3/4. Ipswich to Felixstowe (R.), 11-1/2.
_Felixstowe to Dunwich and back._--(Distances
approximate owing to use of byways and farm tracks.)
Felixstowe to Woodbridge (R.), 10. Woodbridge to
Saxmundham (R.), 12-3/4. Saxmundham to Dunwich, 13-1/2.
Dunwich to Felixstowe, 31.
CHAPTER VI--(_continued_)
FELIXSTOWE, BAWDSEY, WOODBRIDGE, IPSWICH, DUNMOW, AND LONDON
ROADS High-roads fair throughout. Byways between
Bawdsey and Woodbridge very bad, rough, and soft.
[N.B.--Bawdsey Ferry should not be attempted,
especially at low tide, unless the car may be relied
upon to climb from a standstill up a short but very
sharp incline of quite loose gravel. The country beyond
can hardly be called worth taking risks to see.]
HILLS Insignificant.
DISTANCES Felixstowe to Woodbridge (R.), via Bawdsey
Ferry and byways, approximately 15. Woodbridge to
Ipswich (R. A.), 8. Ipswich to Braintree (R.), 35.
Braintree to Great Dunmow (R.), 8. Great Dunmow to
Takeley, 4. Takeley to Hatfield Broad Oak, 3. Hatfield
Broad Oak to High Ongar, 4 (approximately). High Ongar
to Epping (R.), 8. Epping to London, distances as
before, reversing order of places.
CHAPTER VII
COLCHESTER AND EASTWARDS
ROADS Mostly of second- or third-rate quality,
especially in wet weather. Frequently sinuous, narrow,
and overshadowed by trees, and therefore sometimes
greasy in reasonably dry weather.
HILLS Between Ardleigh and Manningtree, 1 in 13.
Between Mistley and Bradfield (_en route_ for Harwich),
1 in 13. Between Bradfield and Dovercourt, 1 in 15.
DISTANCES (1) Colchester (R. A.) to Clacton-on-Sea
(R.), 16. Clacton to Great Holland, 4. Great Holland to
St. Osyth, 8. St. Osyth to Colchester, 11-3/4.
(2) Colchester to Ardleigh, 5. Ardleigh to Manningtree
(R.), 5-1/2.
_Detour_ suggested to East Bergholt, via Dedham, 5;
back to Manningtree, 5. Manningtree to Harwich (R. A.),
via Mistley, Bradfield, and Dovercourt (R.), 11-1/2.
Harwich to Colchester, via Dovercourt, Little Oakley,
Great Oakley, Weeley, and Elmstead Market, 24.
CHAPTER VIII
COLCHESTER AND GAINSBOROUGH'S COUNTRY
ROADS Mostly of second or third class and very sinuous,
so distances are approximate.
HILLS Stoke-by-Nayland, stiff, gradient unknown.
Between Sudbury and Long Melford, 1 in 13.
DISTANCES Colchester to Lexden, 2. Lexden to
Stoke-by-Nayland, 10. Stoke-by-Nayland to Sudbury,
alternative routes (1) via Bures St. Mary, Marsh, and
Great Cornard, 10. (2) via Lavenheath, Arrington, and
Newton, 11. The former recommended as Gainsborough
painted a picture of part of the Wood at Cornard.
Sudbury to Long Melford, 3-1/4. Long Melford, via
Cavendish and Clare to Stoke-by-Clare, 8.
Stoke-by-Clare, via Ridgewell, Tilbury-juxta-Clare, to
Great Yeldham, 4. Great Yeldham to Halstead (P.), via
Castle Hedingham and Little Maplestead, 7. _Detour_ of
3-1/2 out and 3-1/2 back advised to Little Maplestead.
Halstead to Colchester, via Earl's Colne, Fordham, and
Lexden, 12-1/2.
CHAPTER IX
COLCHESTER AND WESTWARDS
ROADS Good to Marks Tey. Fair to Coggeshall, Braintree,
and Witham. Good from Witham to Ingatestone.
Second-rate from Margaretting to Tiptree. Bad from
Tiptree to Heckford Bridge. Thence good into
Colchester.
HILLS To Braintree, a steady rise of 100 feet in 2
miles. From Margaretting to Galleywood Common, a small
climb. From Sandon up to Danbury Hill, nearly 300 feet
in 2 miles. From Maldon and Heybridge, 200 feet in 3
miles.
DISTANCES Colchester to Marks Tey, 6-1/4. Thence to
Coggeshall, 4-1/2. Coggeshall to Braintree (R.), 8.
Braintree to Witham (R.), 8. Witham to Ingatestone,
14-3/4. Ingatestone to Margaretting, 2. Margaretting to
Galleywood Common, 2-1/2. Galleywood Common to Danbury
Hill, 4-1/2. Danbury Hill to Maldon, 5-1/2. Maldon, via
Heybridge, to Tiptree, 7. Tiptree, via Messing and
Heckford Bridge, to Colchester, 9-1/4.
_Alternative routes_ from Braintree to London,
suggested for persons occupied in London, but
preferring country residence--
(1) Via Bishop's Stortford (10-1/4) to Marble Arch
(43), via Sawbridgeworth, Harlow, Epping, Loughton, and
Woodford Green.
(2) Via Chelmsford, Chipping Ongar, Epping and so to
London, exactly reversing route given fully at the head
of Chapter VI.
CHAPTER IX--(_continued_)
COLCHESTER TO GRAYS
ROADS Good to Chelmsford; not bad to Billericay; very
bad beyond.
HILLS Galleywood Common, a stiff rise; about 150 feet
in 2 miles. Billericay Hill, 1 in 13. Langdon Hill, a
stiff rise; 300 feet in 2-1/2 miles.
DISTANCES Colchester to Chelmsford (R.A.), 23-1/4.
Chelmsford to Great Baddow, 1-3/4. Great Baddow to
Billericay (P.), 8. Billericay to Horndon, 8. Horndon
to Chadwell, 4. Chadwell to Little Thurrock and
Hangman's Wood, 1-3/4.
_Suggestions._--(1) Return to Colchester by motor-boat
from East Tilbury to Clacton-on-Sea, about 54 land
miles. Thence by rail.
(2) To London, via Barking, 12; thence 7-1/4 to
Whitechapel. The worst entry into London.
CHAPTER X
ROYSTON TO HARLESTON
ROADS All good high-roads.
HILLS None worthy of mention.
DISTANCES Royston (R.) to Newmarket (R.), 24. Newmarket
to Bury St. Edmunds (R.), 14. Bury St. Edmunds to
Scole, 21-1/2. Scole to Harleston (R.), 7.
CHAPTER XI
HARLESTON TO NORWICH
ROADS All fair, some good, especially Yarmouth to
Norwich and Norwich to Cromer.
HILLS None of moment.
DISTANCES Harleston (R.) to Bungay (R.), 7-1/2. Bungay
to Beccles (R. A.), 6. Beccles to Lowestoft (R. A.),
10. Lowestoft to Yarmouth (R. A.), 10. Yarmouth via
Caister to Norwich (R. A.), 23. Norwich to Cromer (R.),
22-1/2.
CHAPTER XII
CROMER, WELLS, FAKENHAM, LYNN, ELY, CAMBRIDGE, AND ROYSTON
ROADS Fair from Cromer to Wells; good from Wells to
Lynn and from Lynn to Cambridge.
HILLS None of moment, but no monotony of level except
between Lynn and Cambridge.
DISTANCES Cromer (R.) to Wells-next-Sea (R.), 20-1/2.
Wells to Fakenham (R.), 9-3/4. Fakenham to Lynn (R.),
21-3/4. Lynn to Ely (R.), 29. Ely to Cambridge (R. A.),
16. Cambridge to Royston (R.), 13-1/2.
_N.B._--Royston is 42-1/4 from London, and a good point of exit for the
Midlands.
CHAPTER XIII
EXPEDITIONS FROM KING'S LYNN
ROADS Mostly high-roads and good.
HILLS The early part of the projected drive is through
undulating country not marked by very severe gradients.
The later part, from Fakenham to Swaffham, is over
ground higher in average elevation, but of similar
character.
DISTANCES Lynn to Castle Rising, 4-1/4. Castle Rising
to Wolferton, 2. Wolferton to Dersingham, 3. Dersingham
to Hunstanton (R.), 8. Hunstanton to Brancaster, 8.
Brancaster to Burnham Thorpe, 4-1/2. Burnham Thorpe to
Fakenham (R.), 12. Fakenham to Swaffham (R.), 15-1/2.
Swaffham to Lynn (R. A.), 15-1/2.
INTRODUCTION
This book, the first volume it is hoped of a series, was undertaken because
the existing Guide-books were, through no fault in their writers, by no
means adequate to the needs of the traveller by motor-car. A new method of
travel, in fact, brings in its train the need for a new species of
guide-book, and the truth of this observation becomes clear when we
consider an authoritative definition of the term "Guide-book." It is "a
book of directions for travellers and tourists as to the best routes, etc.,
and giving information about the places to be visited." All which needs to
be added to this definition by way of explanation is that the information
given may justly be of almost any kind so long as it is not tedious.
Substantially, all the existing guide-books, some of them of admirable
quality, were written before the motor-car had entered into our social
system. Except a small number of accounts of tours by horse-drawn
carriages, they were compiled by men who travelled by train from place to
place, obtaining no view of the country often--for deep cuttings destroy
all joy of the eye for the railway passenger--and at best only a partial
view, for the use of men and women condemned to the like method of travel.
In them it is vain to seek for any appreciation of the pleasure of the
road, of the delight of travel itself. The motor-car has changed all that.
The act of going from place to place is at least as essential a part of the
enjoyment of a tour as the sojourn at the new place when it is reached, as
the leisurely survey of its features of beauty or interest, or the inquiry
into its history and its associations. Many matters, too, are of moment to
the motorist which are of none to the traveller by rail. He desires to know
something in advance of the nature of the roads to be traversed, of the
gradients to be climbed, of the facilities for housing his car when his
destination of the day is accomplished, and last, but certainly not least,
where he can submit it to a skilled artificer for repair if occasion should
unhappily arise.
Does the motorist need, or desire, more than has been set forth in the
preceding sentence? The anti-motorist will think not, will remain convinced
that the motorist is a dust-raising, property-destroying, dog-killing,
fowl-slaying, dangerous and ruthless speed maniac. But, of course, the
anti-motorist is quite wrong. The rational motorist, who is in the
overwhelming majority--but black sheep are sadly conspicuous amidst a white
flock--passes through certain regular stages of evolution. At first he
revels without thought, or without conscious thought, in the sheer ecstasy
of motion. The road which seems to flow to meet him, white, tawny or grey
as the case may be, and to open before him as if by magic, the pressure of
the cool air on his face, even the tingling lash of the rain as he dashes
against it, result in a feeling of undefinable, almost lyrical, exaltation.
In the next stage he begins to take in broad impressions of great
stretches of country, impressions similar in some respects to those
obtained from a mountain top, but secured in rapid succession. Soon--for
the faculties of man adapt themselves rapidly to his needs--the man in the
car begins to observe more rapidly and more minutely than in the early
days. The man at the steering-wheel finds that he can watch the road up to
the farthest visible point in advance, manipulate his throttle, use
accelerator or decelerator, and, most important of all, be in vigilant
sympathy with his engine, subconsciously. At the same time he can take an
intelligent interest in the scenes through which he is passing, can carry
on a conversation with her or with him who sits by his side, can tell a
good story or listen to one, can impart information or receive it, without
in the slightest degree neglecting his primary duty of driving and
humouring the car. In this is nothing of novelty. The same state of doing
instructively and without reflection the right thing at the right time is
reached by every proficient in many crafts, by the driver of horses for
example, and by the steersman of a sailing vessel. The motorist, therefore,
even if he be driving, can think of things outside the car, can remain a
rational and intelligent man, can (and in my experience usually does)
desire to know those associations of the country-side which, when known,
appeal to his imagination, or to his memory, and make the day's journey
something better and more interesting than a progress through the air and
over the ground. How much more then, after the first bewilderment of
motoring has worn off, shall the mere passenger be able and desirous to
travel with seeing eye and thinking brain?
There is no need to labour the point. Motorists are well aware, without
argument, that they feel an intelligent interest in every part of "this
amazing England," and that they would take that interest more fully if they
were provided, so to speak, with the proper materials. Such materials ought
to be found in guide-books, written in the motorist's mood, which is wider
and often less microscopical than that of the traveller in railway
carriages, and from the point of view of those to whom county boundaries,
which determine the scope of most guide-books, have no meaning, except that
the roads are better, and the police are more sensible, in some counties
than in others. It is the guide-book writer's business to give first
practical facts and directions, and then to provide the information which,
after sifting a vast mass of history, legend, folk-lore, literature, and
gossip, appears to be most interesting and attractive.
East Anglia has been chosen as the first theme, and in many respects it
lends itself exceptionally well to isolated treatment. The motorist, it is
true, has no regard for county boundaries, but let him once venture in his
car to the east of an imaginary line drawn from the Tower Bridge to the
mouth of the Welland, and he will never come outside East Anglia on wheels,
except to the westward. The Wash, the North Sea, and the Estuary of the
Thames will block him effectually. Let him follow the history of this tract
of land, to which the fens were an effectual bulwark on the north-west, and
he will find that history to be one of isolation also. East Anglia has
always gone on its own way, always worked out its own destinies, always
indulged in self-satisfied but inspiring contempt for "the Sheres"; and
so, perhaps, it has suffered less at troublous periods of the national
history than other parts of the country. Its scenery is rarely, perhaps
never, rugged, but it is marked in various parts by many kinds of peculiar
characteristics not to be found elsewhere, some of them of quite
exceptional charm. It has its ancient cities, its majestic cathedrals,
time-worn edifices of many kinds. It is haunted by the ghosts of many great
artists in colour and in words; and--a small matter this, but one adding
greatly to the interest of a motoring tour--there is no other part of the
country in which the lover of bird-life can see so much of bird-life from
the passing car.
One drawback, and one only, is there to East Anglia as a topic for a
motoring guide-book, and that affects only the maker of the book, not the
motoring potentialities, so to speak, of the country. Taken as a whole it
is not at all a flat district, and it has enough ups and downs and variety
of scenery to suit any taste, but it is practically barren of hills
presenting any real difficulty to a car of moderate power. So, in this
volume, it is not necessary or possible to indicate any very serious
gradients to be encountered on this journey or on that. It remains only,
after a word of thanks to the friends who have lent their company and their
cars, to add that every chapter is a faithful narrative of tours undertaken
or of journeys made, together with an account of the associations and
memories appropriate to the places visited, and that, to save breaking the
flow of the text, an analysis showing the route taken in each chapter, the
distances from place to place, the points at which repairs may be
effected, and the general character of the roads, appears at the very
beginning of the volume. It must be understood, however, that these roads
are judged by an East Anglian standard, for, even in Norfolk, where the
road surface is far better as a rule than in any other East Anglian county,
the roads cannot honestly be said to be of the highest order of merit. In
the case of all hotels the presence of garage accommodation may be assumed,
and all have been tried.
THROUGH EAST ANGLIA IN A MOTOR-CAR
CHAPTER I
WINTER. [OXFORD] TO CAMBRIDGE, NEWMARKET, AND IPSWICH
Elections delay start--Rail to Oxford--A treasure
gained--Rail to Cambridge--Bull Hotel--English hotels
criticized--Motorists squeezed--Morning at
Cambridge--King's Chapel--Trinity Library--The Panhard
arrives--Battered at elections--A start--Load and
equipment--Undergraduates as pilots--A street
blocked--Dull road to Newmarket--Bottisham Church
excepted--Delusions about Swaffham Prior and
Bulbeck--The Devil's Dyke--Prosperous Newmarket--The
Icenhilde Way--A delusion in East Anglia--Kentford to
Bury St. Edmunds--A switchback run--Fine trees--Arthur
Young quoted--Bury St. Edmunds--Leland, Dickens, Arthur
Young--Legends of St. Edmund--Past greatness of
Bury--Parliaments held at--The Abbey ruins--Study with
Shakespeare--Pickwick at the "Angel"--At the boarding
school--Bury via Bayton, Woolpit, and Stowmarket to
Ipswich--Night travelling--A legend of Woolpit--Dull
Stowmarket--Ipswich at last--Narrow streets and fast
tramcars--The "Great White Horse"--Why did Dickens
speak so ill of it?--_Quaere_ why the White Horse is an
East Anglian sign--The "Crown and Anchor"--Ipswich
oysters and gloves.
The year 1905 had almost run out when this volume was finally decided upon,
and then a good many things happened, according to expectation and
otherwise. Christmas came, surprising the railway companies as usual, but
not the public, and the resignation of Mr. Balfour's Government. The
resignation of Mr. Balfour, with its corollary of a General Election,
involved some unavoidable delay in opening this campaign of pilgrimages in
East Anglia. For during that General Election almost everybody who owned a
motor-car and could drive it, or thought he could drive it, was stirred to
lend his car and his energies to the service of his party by motives of
double cogency. He desired, more or less keenly at the outset, but always
vehemently, and even passionately after he had tasted the joy of battle, to
lend his aid to the political party of his choice; and he knew further that
the General Election of 1906 had provided motorists with a priceless
opportunity of doing missionary work among the electorate at a critical
moment in the history of Automobilism. He felt that the Motor Act of 1903,
of limited duration in any event, needed to be supplanted by a measure
treating him as a reasoning and responsible being, rather than as a
dangerous beast, and, having some hope that the Royal Commission then
sitting would report in his favour (as, on the whole, it has reported), he
recognized that enlightened self-interest made it desirable to educate
public opinion into the frame of mind suitable for the reception of an
enabling measure.
For these reasons, and some that are immaterial, it was not convenient to
make the first raid into East Anglia until nearly the end of January, 1906,
and that was a period calculated to try the reality of man's or woman's
sincerity as a devotee of motoring by a somewhat severe test. How that test
was applied it shall be my endeavour to tell in a narrative form, and to
that form a preference will be given throughout the book, digressions being
made, as occasion serves or fancy calls, to mention matters of practical
utility or of intelligent interest.
Let me, therefore, "cut the cackle and come"--not to "the 'osses" by any
means--but to the country and to the motor-cars. On Monday, January the
23rd, 1906, my daughter and I proceeded first to Oxford, and then to
Cambridge by rail. Both journeys were an object lesson in the inferiority
of the railway train, as it is arranged in England, to the motor-car, for
purposes of cross-country travel. Our starting point being Abingdon,
distant six miles only from Oxford, we were compelled to change trains at
Radley _en route_. A long wait at Oxford would have been irritating if it
had not been providential; as it was it furnished me with a private copy of
Mr. F. J. Haverfield's _Romano-British Norfolk_, extracted from the
"Victoria County History," and the dreadfully tedious journey to Cambridge
allowed me to master that most accomplished and useful work. Cambridge we
reached--not for the first time by any means--well after dusk, and there we
lay, as they used to say in old times, at the Bull Hotel on King's Parade
in reasonable comfort, an undergraduate kinsman of Trinity College having
cheered us by his company at dinner.
Here let me pause for a moment to speak of an all-important matter. It has
been written that we were comfortably entertained at the "Bull"; it might
be added that the hotel seemed much cleaner and brighter than when I had
last entered it, and that the charges were, for an English hotel, not
unreasonable. Unfortunately, it must be said also that the charges at the
"Bull" and throughout the United Kingdom are far in excess of those for
which at least equal accommodation and at least equally palatable fare can
be obtained on most parts of the Continent frequented by tourists, and that
this fact is at once the most serious obstacle to tours by motor-cars at
home, and the principal cause why Englishmen go touring abroad to the
neglect of their own country, the prejudice of British hotel-keepers, and
the profit of the foreigner. They do not, I think, desire to ignore the
beauties of their own country; they are even anxious to study it in detail;
but the hotel-keepers of the provinces, without quite killing the goose
that lays the golden eggs, have a suicidal habit of making nesting
accommodation so expensive that the bird, being a wise bird really, becomes
perforce migratory as the swallow. More unwise in relation to the motorist
even than in relation to the ordinary traveller--it will be observed that
there is no special reference to the "Bull," and that we did not go there
as motorists openly--hotel-keepers frequently behave as if they thought the
owner of a motor-car must needs possess an endless supply of ready money,
whereas the legitimate inference from his ownership of an expensive vehicle
is that he has none to spare. Motor-cars of real value--and no sensible man
will have them of any other kind--cannot be obtained on credit, and
hotel-keepers might have learned from experience that a banking account is
reduced, unless it be an overdraft, not increased, by drawing a heavy
cheque upon it.
Some day, perhaps, there will be an improvement in this respect. In the
meanwhile the path is not altogether clear before him who would fain play
the part of guide to his fellow-men. So long ago as 1799 a correspondent of
the _Norfolk Chronicle_ wrote: "There is room for a most useful work in the
form of an itinerary, which shall give an impartial account of the several
inns of the kingdom under the heads of quality, cleanliness, beds," etc.
There is still just as much room, but until the law of libel shall be
changed the "most useful work" is not likely to be written. Certainly I am
not going to write it--not that I lack the inclination nor the desire to be
of service; not that I have not a nice taste for comfort, nor an experience
of British and Irish hotels possessed by few men other than commercial
travellers--simply because I cannot afford the time or the money to fight a
series of actions, in which a verdict for the defendant would leave me
still liable for the difference between my solicitor's bill of costs "as
between solicitor and client," and the same bill taxed "as between party
and party." The utmost that is possible, and at the same time prudent, is
to point to examples of merit. Demerit, dearness, and dirt must go
unchastised.
[Illustration: CAMBRIDGE--KING'S COLLEGE AND THE CAM]
My arrangement with a friend, who had done as much electioneering as he and
his car could endure, was that he should run down from London and pick us
up at the "Bull" on Tuesday after luncheon.
Tuesday morning, therefore--a frosty, windless, somewhat misty morning--was
spent in what in our domestic circle is called "abroading" in Cambridge,
that is to say, in visiting places of paramount interest. But let the
reader take heart. Some little knowledge of Cambridge, the fruit of many
sojourns and of considerable reading, is not going to be made an excuse for
a topographical, archaeological, and architectural chapter upon a subject
worthy of a long book, already treated in many volumes, grave and gay. Even
if such a chapter could be legitimate here it would be wrong for a mere
Oxford man to write it, and I shall never forget how, when I was staying at
Cambridge a year or two ago, a Cambridge friend who took me out
sight-seeing closed my mouth before it was opened, so to speak, by saying,
"You are absolutely forbidden to ask where our 'High' is." As matters
stand, remembering always that this Cambridge friend is not at my elbow,
and firmly believing, with Mr. Ruskin, that "the High" at Oxford is not to
be matched in the world as a whole, I am inclined to think King's College,
as seen from King's Parade, leaves nothing to be desired, and that King's
College Chapel has a claim almost equal to that of St. George's Chapel,
Windsor, to be recognized as the most exquisite example of Perpendicular
architecture to be found in England. Of course, the best way to see all
there is at Cambridge, and to understand it, is to live at Cambridge; and
the next best is to go there often and to study it piecemeal. To try to
absorb impressions of Cambridge in one visit, even one of many days, is to
submit the human brain to too severe an ordeal. On former occasions I had
seen the Backs in summer, had spent an hour or two in the Senate House on a
State occasion, had looked into the University Library and had admired the
delightfully free-and-easy way in which graduates are permitted to borrow
its books, had seen cricket played and had played football on Parker's
Piece, had stayed in college rooms at Caius: and yet impressions remained a
little confused in memory. This time we went to King's College, and to the
chapel especially, again. If it falls behind St. George's at all, it is in
point of lightness, in which St. George's is perfect. So to Trinity
College, where we admired unfeignedly the Great Court, Nevile's Court and
the Library, and spoke politely of the chapel, where the Grinling Gibbons'
carvings are really good. But it was in the library that one would gladly
have spent hours.
A lecture was in progress in the hall, so that was closed to us; but the
library is perfect. Somewhere in the world there may be the equal of it,
but, in a life of fairly extended wandering, I have not entered its match.
One hundred and sixty feet long, forty feet wide, with its carved
bookcases, its abundant busts of famous men, its portraits, its magnificent
collection of coins, its rare books and manuscripts, its unbroken
stillness, and, above all, its ample and all-pervading light, Trinity
College Library is not merely a book-lover's paradise, but even a place to
compel an air-loving man to be bookish. Hence to St. John's, many-courted,
with walls of ancient brick and stone dressings, the most architecturally
individual of Cambridge's colleges, and so, by the Bridge of Sighs, across
the chilly, green, and exiguous Cam to the Backs. These, since there had
been no white frost of the dainty kind that drapes a landscape in a fairy
veil of silvered lace, were not at their best, but in summer they are of
rare beauty. Still this was winter. So the small remaining part of the
morning was devoted to a pilgrimage to Magdalene, the only college entirely
situated on the left bank of the Cam, famous mainly for the Pepysian
Library (everybody knows how the six volumes of shrewd gossip in shorthand
were discovered and interpreted) and itself a quiet and sequestered retreat
in appearance, although the undergraduates are not always in the mood
appropriate to their environment.
By two o'clock the charioteer had come, his face bearing traces of the
black fog through which he had forced his way out of London; the 15 h.p.
Panhard, with a short wheelbase, was in the yard. We must be tolerant, he
said, of his Panhard's shortcomings, after a fortnight of hard
electioneering on the part of master, mechanic, and car; and he had come
down from London on three cylinders. In due course the Panhard came round
to the door, dinted a little by the missiles of partisans, having lost some
of the white paint of her rear number under the impact of voters' iron-shod
toes, a little war-worn and dingy, in fact, to the eye. Her carrying
capacity was, however, soon tested severely, and she bore the trial
unflinchingly. First luggage: a suit-case for the daughter, the same for my
friend the charioteer, a small kit-bag for me, nothing visible for the
mechanic--a stalwart ex-soldier of six feet and 14 stone, if he was an
ounce. Charioteer, in motor-coat, was about 13 stone. He and an
undergraduate of some 9 stone sat in the front seats, the mechanic on the
step. In the back seats were my daughter, say 10 stone, wraps included;
myself, say 13 stone in the like condition; and on the back step a second
undergraduate, say 11 stone 7 lb.--for the two young men were going to
pilot us out of Cambridge. But the little Panhard made no account of these
things, and started off as a greyhound from the slips.
Practical considerations make it desirable to say what my daughter and I
wore. My friend and his mechanic wore a lot, precisely in what detail I
cannot say. My daughter wore a thick tweed dress, a short fur coat, a
mackintosh with sleeves gathered in at the wrists over that, a red
Connemara cloak sometimes--its colour proved to be of incidental advantage
later in quite an unexpected way--a motor-cap and veil, fur-lined gloves,
and a muff. I wore a vest, flannel shirt, lined corduroy waistcoat,
ordinary tweed trousers, a rowing "sweater" over the waistcoat, thick
Norfolk jacket, thick Ulster coat--without inner sleeves gathered, worse
luck--and loose woollen gloves. I was never too warm, often much too cold,
and the woollen gloves turned out a fraud. They were of no use as a
protection against wind and cold combined, and a motor-car makes its own
wind. In fact, there is nothing like leather, with or without fur or wool
within.
The undergraduates were useful as pilots to Jesus Lane, where we turned to
the right, which brought us in fact, although not in name, into the direct
road for Newmarket; not that it is so difficult in Cambridge, as in many
other towns of East Anglia, to solve correctly the all-important problem
how to find the absolutely right exit having regard to the point sought in
the distance. But the streets of the heart of Cambridge are of an
exceptional narrowness, and we were not through them without becoming
witnesses of an incident, almost worthy of the title accident, which
delayed us a little and might have delayed us more but for the camaraderie
of motorists. We were proceeding slowly up a narrow street behind a motor
omnibus, the roadway being wide enough to allow two vehicles to pass, but
no more. On the off-side of the omnibus, facing it, were a motor-car,
attended as the law directs, at rest by the kerb, and a tradesman's cart
and horse behind the car, cart and horse being unattended, as is not
unusual, law or no law. The horse, perceiving the motor omnibus, and being
probably unaccustomed to the sight, proceeded at once to give one of those
convincing exhibitions in equine intelligence which must be the constant
joy of the thick-and-thin champions of that traditionally "noble animal."
Planting its forefeet on to the pavement, it backed the cart violently into
the bonnet of the passing omnibus, of course blocking the route completely.
Somebody, possibly the man who ought to have been in charge, came up and
pulled the stupid brute into line, but not before it had also contrived to
injure a wing of the resting and innocent motor-car. The omnibus was
disabled for a time at any rate; traffic accumulated rapidly behind us; it
seemed likely that we might have to spend the rest of the afternoon in this
street that might justly be called Strait. But the injured motor-car was
most courteously backed out of the way to make a passage for us, and we
proceeded on our journey rejoicing and grateful.
It would be a stretch of imagination--in fact, it would be what the late
Sir William Harcourt once called "a good thumping lie"--to say that the
exit from Cambridge to the eastward has any features of interest, or that
the dead level of the Newmarket road for the first few miles is attractive
on a cold and dull day, when Ely, dominating the low-lying plain in decent
weather, is not visible to the naked eye. This Fen Country has its charm of
appearance no less than of history. Its history, indeed, is an engineering
epic, to which it will be possible to allude, hardly to do justice, at a
later point. January 24, 1906, was not a day calculated to make the
motorist feel in a romantic mood concerning the Fens. The road, straight,
level, muddy where it was not metalled, metalled where it was not muddy,
was lost in grey vapour to the front of us. The prospect on either side was
of flat ploughed land, and of land on which the steaming plough-horses were
even then at work; there was no distant view at all.
Some five or six miles out of Cambridge the undergraduates alighted to walk
home through the mud, and we left them behind with many shoutings of
farewell, reflecting to ourselves the while that one of them, who, with the
true carelessness of a twentieth-century undergraduate of Cambridge (or for
that matter of Oxford), was wearing tennis shoes, would find walking in the
mud to be one of those carnal pleasures whereof satiety cometh soon rather
than late. Soon we passed a church close to the road on the left, a
striking structure of brick and stone, and said to be the finest example of
Decorated architecture in East Anglia. How that can be, having regard to
the existence of Ely and the rhapsodies that are penned concerning its
Decorated portion, it is not for me to say. At any rate Bottisham church,
commanding the landscape as it can only be commanded in a plain, is a
stately and beautiful structure, leaving an abiding impression on the
memory. It is, in fact, essentially a motorist's church--that is to say,
one of which a passing view gives sincere pleasure.
The afternoon had advanced more than was desirable. I did not like to ask
my kindly charioteer to make a detour for Swaffham, which I then believed
to lie on our left. Instead of that I regaled him with memories of
Swaffham, which have their proper place in another chapter. The
conversation helped to pass the time; at any rate it did no harm, and it
was only a month or two later, in the "Maid's Head" at Norwich, that I
learned where the real Swaffham was, and that this detour, if it had been
made, would have shown us nothing but the relics of two churches at
Swaffham Prior and another church at Swaffham Bulbeck.
Now there is an end of the dead level whereof the most eager of motorists
is apt to grow weary, if only because it gives his good car nothing to do.
At Bottisham, among the Fens, in fact, but not in their heart, the road is
but forty-six feet above the sea-level at King's Lynn, but in the course of
two miles to Street Way (surely Roman by its name) the road rises rapidly
and the Panhard climbs cheerfully to a height of 170 feet, an upland having
regard to its surroundings on the western side. The very air, eagerly as it
bites the cheeks of those who are forced through it, seems more bracing,
more exhilarating, more instinct with life than the stagnant atmosphere of
the plain. Here are wide spaces, pines and Scotch firs; but the spaces are
not wild, for innumerable white boards on posts, the marks of galloping
grounds, tell us that we are on the confines of Newmarket Heath and near
the metropolis of the turf. Such it has been since the days of Charles I,
and such, having regard to the fact that it has been for upwards of a
century and a half the head-quarters of the Jockey Club, it is likely to
remain, even though the "going" be better at Newbury in Berks, which is a
little nearer to London.
But we are not at Newmarket yet. There is the Devil's Dyke--irreverently
called the Ditch where it bisects the familiar course--to be crossed. Why
his Satanic Majesty should be credited with so many dykes it is not easy to
see. Devil's Punchbowls, of which there are scores, if not hundreds, in the
kingdom, are more natural and rational, for a being of Satan's traditional
environment might reasonably be credited with thirst upon a large scale and
with a liking for cold punch equal to that which was all but the temporary
ruin of Mr. Pickwick, and quite fatal for the time to his young friend upon
another memorable drive to Ipswich, for that was our destination too. The
devil did not make this dyke, running from Reach, north of the Great
Eastern Railway, to Ditton Green, near Wood Ditton, that is certain; yet
nobody knows exactly who the builders were. What is known is that it has a
rampart on the west side, and that the Iceni, of whom all that is necessary
will be told soon, held the land to the eastward, so far as land was held
in those days. Probably, like their successors in the same territory in
mediaeval times, during the Stuart period, and now, they had a good conceit
of themselves and a robust contempt for their western neighbours, and
therefore, perhaps, they built them this rampart and digged this ditch, or
made their captives dig it for them, as a bulwark against the outer world.
It must be confessed, however, that thoughts and conversation ran not on
the Iceni, not on the violent deaths which came to most of them eighteen
centuries and a half ago, but on the death of one man of our time whom
Newmarket Heath had known as a familiar visitor. Only a few days before Sir
James Miller had died full of racing honours, but by no means of years. A
tribute to the memory of this prince of racing men was surely due most
appropriately at Newmarket.
Of Newmarket the story needs no telling. It is not, perhaps, so long as
that of Cambridge, but probably it is better known to a greater number of
persons. Equally well known are the seats of the mighty in the immediate
vicinity. But perhaps the traveller through Newmarket, and to it, by road,
will not only notice the thoroughbreds, if there be any on view--we
naturally saw none late on a winter's afternoon--but will not resent the
fact that his attention is directed to an interesting feature of Newmarket,
as of other racing and training centres. Newmarket may be, as Lord
Chesterfield said in his will that it was, "an infamous seminary of
iniquity and ill manners." Men may back horses at Newmarket, may gamble,
may try every cunning device known to those who have to do with horses--not
that some of those who are concerned with motors are much better--but
Newmarket, in appearance at least, is free from that worst of all evils,
poverty, which is rarely absent from agricultural Arcadia, and, as Dr.
Jessopp has shown, very prevalent in East Anglia. Its houses are trim and
weatherproof, the paint of doors and gates is clearly renewed often. The
whole place has an air of prosperity which disarms curious investigation
into the sources of its wealth. The children are rosy and plump, and that,
at any rate, is a blessing; and, save perhaps for backing a horse with
judgment now and again, which is a great deal less vicious than backing one
without knowledge or judgment, I dare be sworn that their morality and
their standard of life are much higher than those of the Arcadian peasant.
The weak light was growing quite dim as we passed through Newmarket and
out of Cambridgeshire into Suffolk--out of "the Sheers" into East Anglia,
in the narrowest sense of the term. Our course for Bury St. Edmunds lay
along a road of astonishing straightness, having many fine oaks and other
trees on either side; for the matter of levels it was, and of course is, a
series of long ups and downs, of no very severe gradients, and the going on
the newly-frozen road left nothing to be desired. At Kentford, according to
the Ordnance map and the tradition of the antiquaries of yesterday, we
crossed the Icknield or Icenhilde Way. Unfortunately, from the point of
view of one who would like to conjure up visions of ancient Britons, neatly
painted with woad in summer, fur-clad in winter, sweeping down this road
with scythe-chariots to meet an invader from the west, or to make a raid
into the Midlands themselves, the Icenhilde Way has to be numbered among
the pretty traditions which cannot be cherished any longer. It has been
called the warpath of the Iceni, or a principal Roman road. Ickleton, in
Cambridgeshire, Icklingham, in Suffolk, Ickleford, in Herts, have been
imagined to represent points upon its route from Norwich to Berkshire and
the west. But probabilities, philology, and charters are separately fatal
to the theory, and they are irresistible in combination. Over philology I
shall not delay longer than to say, on the best authority, that, according
to well-known laws, if the places now known as Icklingham and so on had
been called after the Iceni, they would have been written otherwise than
they are. Again, if the way had been the warpath of the Iceni, it would
certainly be more clearly traceable in the east, which was theirs, than in
the west, which was not; whereas the contrary is the case. Charters are
even far more deadly to this romance than philology and probability.
Referring to the date of the Norman Conquest and to the Icenhilde Way, Mr.
Haverfield says: "Not till three centuries later do we find its name
applied to roads in Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire, while east of
Newmarket we never find it at all." This is conclusive, for it is the
considered judgment of a man exceptionally learned and acute upon the
subject to which he has devoted most of the leisure of an academical life,
and so this avenue of romance and to romance is definitely and permanently
closed.
From Kentford to Bury St. Edmunds was a fine, but cold, switchback run
along a very straight road, just before lighting-up time, though it was not
dark enough yet to prevent an impression of the landscape from being left
on the mind. No very great houses were close to the road on either side,
but the trees on the right were of remarkable stature, and on the left were
many belts of Scotch firs, evenly planted, almost like shaws in Kent, which
seemed, as did many similar belts seen on other tours, to indicate the
existence of landowners, past or present, who had prepared the way for the
continental method of driving partridges. For the first time, as our car
coursed along with the subdued and yet lively melody of the true "Panhard
hum," one began to realize how vast an influence has been exercised over
the face of nature in Norfolk and Suffolk, how many new features have been
grafted on to that face, by men who have made good shooting the principal
object of estate management in the part of England better suited to that
purpose than to any other. Arthur Young thought, it is true, of the land
between Thetford and Bury, and probably of this land also, that it would
repay cultivation. It "lies for some miles over a wild heath, overrun with
bushes, whins, and fern, the wild luxuriance of whose growth displays
evidently enough how greatly it would answer to break it up and convert it
into arable farms; for a soil that has strength enough to throw up such
vigorously growing weeds would, if cultivated, produce corn in plenty." But
Arthur Young, as we shall see in a minute or two, had no eye for the
picturesque; he certainly could not have foreseen the present low prices of
various grains; and still more certainly he could have had no idea of the
length to which game preservation would go, or of the amount of employment
to which it would give rise. His advice was followed in a number of cases,
but it may be suspected that some of the famous warrens of Norfolk and
Suffolk pay better in rabbits for the London market in these days than they
would pay under crops.
Soon we glided "through the well-paved streets of a handsome little town,"
to quote the words of Charles Dickens, who was impressed, as Leland had
been three centuries before him, by the cheerful brightness of Bury St.
Edmunds. Arthur Young's editor of 1772, "the author of the _Farmer's
Letters_"--I see I have done Young himself an injustice--tells us that
"Bury is a tolerably well-built town, in a dry and healthy situation; many
of the streets cut each other at right angles; but a parcel of dirty
thatched houses are found in some of them not far from the centre of the
town, which has a very bad effect." We should probably hold a different
view of the thatched houses now, and the motorist who passes through Bury
will certainly desire to know more of it than the author of the _Farmer's
Letters_ deigned to tell. I had been to Bury before January, 1906, and I
have visited it since, though never in such discomfort as the Confessor,
who made the last mile of his pilgrimage to St. Edmund's shrine unshod.
Yet, interesting as Bury St. Edmunds is, it is not as a pilgrimage to St.
Edmund's shrine that a visit to Bury and a fairly long halt there are
recommended. St. Edmund is really rather a difficult saint concerning whom
to wax rapturous, because our certain knowledge of him amounts to very
little and yet gives him a date sufficiently modern to make the monkish
legends about him even more completely absurd than such legends are wont to
be. There is no doubt that he was a king of East Anglia who was defeated by
the Danes in 870 A.D. Hume, one of the most matter-of-fact of our
historians, and surely the most unimaginative man who ever took it upon
himself to tell an historical tale, says this and no more: "They broke into
East Anglia, defeated and took prisoner Edmund, the king of that country,
whom they afterwards murdered in cool blood." (This is quoted from the
edition of 1823, containing Adam Smith's "appreciation" of his friend,
written in 1776, and the "author's last corrections and improvements.") The
_Student's Hume_ of my youth, mindful perhaps of the wisdom of appealing to
the memory of the young through the imagination, gives the date of Edmund's
defeat as 871, for the sake of variety perhaps, and adds that, Edmund
having rejected with scorn and horror a proposal that he should abjure
Christianity and rule under the Danish supremacy, "the Danes bound him
naked to a tree, scourged and shot at him with arrows, and finally beheaded
him." That is not unlikely. A live target was, as the Scandinavian
mythology shows, quite to the taste of the northern barbarians. King
Edmund's body may very likely have been, as Abbo says, "_velut asper
hericius, aut spinis hirtus carduus, in passione similis Sebastiano egregio
martyri_"; "like a rough hedgehog or a thistle bristling with thorns, etc."
(There need be no apology for giving the translation which caused a
classical schoolmaster some trouble, because _hericius_ is not a word used
in classical Latin.) That was a martyrdom sufficient to justify
canonization, an abbey in honour of the martyred king, and pilgrimages to
his shrine, which were undertaken by quite a number of distinguished
persons to the great profit of the institution preserving of it. But the
monkish chroniclers had an unhappy habit of spoiling their stories by
excessive and impossible embroidery. The romantic inventions that, when
Edmund's followers stole back to the scene of his torture, they heard a
voice crying, "Here, here, here," in a wood, and there found a wolf
guarding the saint's head between its paws, and that the head, being
replaced upon the trunk by human hands, was miraculously reunited to it,
only spoil the story for us of the modern world; for 870 A.D. is fairly
late in the history of England really. They suggest the vision of crafty
ecclesiastics plotting how most effectively to advertise the shrine, for
the glory of God of course, but also for the profit of the abbey; and that,
to our minds, is repellent. That the ecclesiastics knew their public is
clear, however, from the results here, as at Walsingham. The wolf legend,
palpably false as it was, passed into ecclesiastical heraldry throughout
East Anglia as generally as the story, probably true, of the manner of the
martyrdom, and East Anglian churches have many traces of it in stone and in
painted glass. Hence came the illustrious pilgrims and their offerings, and
hence, in some measure at any rate, the fact that this little inland city
of East Anglia played in its time a very important part in the history of
England.
How great that part was it is exceedingly difficult to realize as one
stands in the centre of that essentially peaceful town. Yet it really has a
genuine claim to its motto: _Sacrarium regis, cunabula legis_. Of the two
great meetings of barons and clergy held before King John was forced to
sign Magna Charta, one was held in London, at St. Paul's, the other in the
Abbey Church of Bury St. Edmunds, of all places in England, as we should
be inclined to add now. In truth, nothing could be more natural, for the
venue illustrates not only the paramount influence of ecclesiasticism in
those days, but also the characteristic tendencies of the East Anglian
people. Other ecclesiastical centres, of course, there were equal in
importance and wealth, and other mitred abbeys. Only in London, always
jealous for its liberties, and in East Anglia, could such meetings have
been held with confident assurance of the support of the mass of the
inhabitants. Read the scattered history of Eastern England, reflect upon
the many democratic risings that it witnessed; remember the Eastern
Counties Association and the almost complete unanimity of East Anglia for
the Parliament against Charles--then the selection of Bury St. Edmunds for
this memorable assembly becomes easily intelligible. Parliaments were held
there sometimes; royal visits were frequent. In fact, this quiet country
town was one of the most influential places in the kingdom until the
Dissolution. Then it suffered "a knok of a kynge," to quote Piers
Plow-man's prophecy concerning the abbey of Abingdon, and its glory
departed for evermore. It remains a bright town, possessed of a famous old
inn, "The Angel," and of the ruins of the abbey, still of uncommon
interest, which were laid out as a botanical garden before Thomas Carlyle
wrote _Past and Present_. They are a garden and a playground still.
A good deal of imagination is called for before the architectural glories
of the abbey can be reconstructed in a mental picture, and the best help to
be obtained in such an exercise of the imagination comes from reading once
again words spoken of the abbey, words purporting to have been uttered
within what Carlyle called its "wide internal spaces," words conjuring up
realities none the less for that they are themselves the product of an
inspired imagination. Need it be said that the reference here is to the
second part of Shakespeare's _King Henry VI_? Here Suffolk and the Queen
dropped poison into the King's ears concerning absent Gloucester; here
Gloucester pleaded his cause in vain in imperishable lines of despairing
resignation and passionate patriotism:--
I know their complot is to have my life;
And if my death might make this island happy,
And prove the period of their tyranny,
I would expend it with all willingness.
Here, in some dark recess of a dungeon, Suffolk's hireling villains
"dispatched the Duke." Here was enacted the grim scene, very short, but
infinitely pathetic, wherein Suffolk goes to summon his victim to trial,
knowing him dead already, and the Queen, the very embodiment of
cold-blooded hypocrisy, cries aloud to the King, the Cardinal, and
Somerset:--
God forbid any malice should prevail,
That faultless may condemn a nobleman!
Pray God he may acquit him of suspicion!
Back came Suffolk, trembling and pale, for fear of consequences, to
announce the news that was known to him, for he had made it all too certain
before he left the "room of state" upon his futile errand. We can almost
hear the dull sound of the swooning King's fall, and his agonized lament:--
For in the shade of death I shall find joy;
In life but double death now Gloucester's dead.
And what comes next? Surely it is essentially characteristic of the people
of East Anglia:--
The Commons, like an angry hive of bees,
That want their leader, scatter up and down.
Here, again, the substratum of authentic fact is, as in the case of St.
Edmund, made the foundation of an imaginative structure; but see how vast
is the difference between the effects produced by the paltry monkish
embroiderer and the Poet, the maker, the creator. The first tale almost
raises a smile of incredulity; the second, written in characters of blood
and tears, stirs the heart to its depths.
Bury has its lighter memories and associations too. Many good Englishmen
who would not step far out of their way to make a pilgrimage to what was
once St. Edmund's shrine, who might even feel that the second part of _King
Henry VI_ was a little above their heads, may be relied upon to take a
great deal of trouble for the sake of treading in the footsteps of the
immortal Mr. Pickwick. It was at the "Angel" in Bury St. Edmunds, still "a
large inn standing in a wide open street, and nearly facing the Old Abbey,"
that Mr. Pickwick enjoyed "a very satisfactory dinner." This was, as we
shall have occasion to see at Ipswich, high praise indeed when uttered by
the author of Mr. Pickwick's being, who, if displeased by the accommodation
and fare offered to him, did not hesitate to express his opinion with
remarkable force of language. In the tap-room of the said "Angel," Mr.
Weller, having been voted into the chair, cracked such jests and evoked
such uproarious laughter that his master's rest was broken. The pump in the
"Angel" yard cooled Sam's throbbing head next morning so effectually that,
shortly afterwards, he was able to describe the stranger in the mulberry
suit, stranger as he deemed him, as looking "as conwivial as a live trout
in a lime basket." In the adjoining tap, again, Sam, "the names of Veller
and gammon" having "come into contract" for the one and only time in that
veracious history, cemented his alliance with the deceitful Job Trotter
over gin and cloves. He took the doubtless fragrant and pungent beverage as
a pick-me-up in the morning; it might have served us, perhaps well, as a
warmth-restorer in the afternoon; but candour compels the confession that,
for the moment, we forgot the _Pickwick Papers_, drew up in front of the
"Suffolk," not the "Angel," and did our best to restore heat to our chilled
bodies by gargantuan consumption of crumpets, tea, and jam. Even this was
mildly Pickwickian (who can forget the story of the gentleman who
demonstrated by devoted self-slaughter the proposition that crumpets _is_
wholesome?). But as we did not drink gin and cloves in honour of Sam
Weller, so we did not blow out our brains to prove the wholesome character
of crumpets.
Yet one more Pickwickian association of Bury St. Edmunds must be set down.
In a private room of the "Angel" the artful Mr. Trotter, having "gammoned"
Sam, proceeded to "gammon" his innocent master also with the story of "the
large, old, red-brick house just outside the town, sir," and the pretended
revelation of his own master's nefarious intentions. Hence came kindly Mr.
Pickwick's ludicrously pathetic vigil in the garden, alarm of maids,
hysterics of Miss Smithers, drenching of Mr. Pickwick, doubts whether he
was burglar or lunatic, imprisonment in the Clothes Closet, rescue and
explanation by Mr. Wardle, rheumatics of Mr. Pickwick, and, last of all,
the Parish Clerk's tale. These things are not history of course, "which
there never war no sich a person" as Mr. Pickwick, but they are
imperishable and essential truths none the less, and the _Pickwick Papers_
are a possession of Bury St. Edmunds at least equal in commercial value to
all the legends of St. Edmund, King and Martyr. So much for Bury on this
occasion. We shall see it again, and foregather this time at the "Angel."
We left the hotel, to find cold and windless darkness in full possession.
It was my first experience of driving in a motor-car on a dark night for
any considerable distance through an unknown country. The first few miles,
through Bayton and Woolpit, were very difficult, the road sinuous as a
corkscrew, the necessity for dismounting to study the sign-posts constantly
occurring. In marked contrast, however, to experience in some of our
southern counties, was the alert intelligence of the country-folk. From
Stowmarket the road to Ipswich, our destination, was straight, but seemed
endless. At first we tried to proceed with oil lamps only; then we were
driven to acetylene; but, with air none too clear at any time and wreaths
of denser mist now and again, even the acetylene rays did not penetrate
very far. On the whole, cold apart, this kind of driving at night is not to
be recommended. I remember nothing of that journey to Ipswich, except the
cold and the mild excitement of trying to guess the species of the splendid
trees passed by their shadowy forms and general character. Oaks I saw, and
elms and beeches for certain--for the form of these may not easily be
mistaken. In the matter of ashes I would not like to pledge my faith, for
one might easily mix up an ash tree in winter, half seen by a light not
thrown distinctly upon it, with some other tree. But the best thing I
remember of that night, out of doors, was the sight of the lights of
Ipswich and of the tall tramcars, which told us that we were there at last.
Neither fate nor inclination has taken me down this same road by daylight
since then, but something may be said of the places passed in the darkness,
with due acknowledgment of the aid afforded by Mr. W. A. Butt's _Suffolk_,
in the "Little Guides Series" (Methuen). The acknowledgment is made the
more gladly, and the aid is borrowed with the more confidence that it will
not prove a broken reed, because "in another place" and at another time I
have had the privilege of knowing Mr. Dutt in MS. as a careful and
fascinating writer, equally learned in antiquities and in ornithology, and
very much at home in East Anglia. Had it been light we might have seen at
Tostock a fine church, Perpendicular in the main, but with an early
Decorated chancel. As motorists, however, we should hardly have been
induced to descend and explore the interior even by the hope of seeing
carved oak benches, one of them showing "the fabulous cockatrice" and
another the unicorn scratching himself with his horn. At Woolpit we might
have seen a new tower to an old church, the tower built no later than 1854.
But the tower is no outrage, for it had to be built to replace an older one
destroyed by lightning. To Woolpit, too, belongs one of William of
Newburgh's strange legends, thus summarized by Mr. Dutt: "One day, while
some men were at work in a harvest field here, they saw a boy and a girl,
whose bodies were green and their dresses of a strange material, appear out
of the pits known as the 'Wolfpittes.' They said they had come from a
Christian land, which had churches, but where there was no sun, 'only a
faint twilight, but beyond a broad river there lay a land of light.' Their
country was called the land of St. Martin; and, one day, while they were
tending their father's sheep, they heard a noise like the ringing of the
bells of Bury Abbey, 'and all at once they found themselves among the
reapers in the harvest field at Woolpit.' The boy, we are told, soon died,
but the girl lived to marry a man of Lynn." The name of the place in
_Domesday_ is "Wlfpeta," which is simply "Wolf-pit," but why this
particular wolf-pit, out of the hundreds that there must have been,
retained the name, there is nothing to show. At Haughley, moved to alight
by some of the guide-books in the hope of finding ruins, we should have
discovered a mound only, its origin quite uncertain; and at Stowmarket
there would have been no temptation to halt. Chemicals and cordite combine
to give the ancient market town some prosperity, some calamities, and no
beauty. Here we began to follow the course of the railway and the River
Gipping, the eponymous river of Ipswich until it is named anew. At Great
Blakenham we passed a manor given by Henry VI to Eton College, and at
Claydon an Elizabethan hall.
But, sad truth to tell, we were in the mood of Gallio that evening, so far
as these things were concerned, and the vision of the lights of Ipswich was
unmixed pleasure. It was generally admitted that the last eight miles into
the ancient city, from the point at which a native stated that they begun,
must have been measured with a very elastic chain. Nor was entry into
Ipswich easy. He who held the steering wheel was one who, for combined
nicety, courage, and consideration in slipping through traffic, has few
equals in this country; but his task was of more than common difficulty.
The streets of Ipswich, or most of them, are of an exceeding narrowness;
the electric tramcars glide through them, swift, monumental, irresistible,
in their usual Juggernaut mood. Hardly anywhere is there room for a vehicle
to be drawn up to the kerb on the inside of the tramway lines. We, indeed,
were not suffered by the police to draw up in front of the "Great White
Horse" at all, even for the purpose of dismounting, but were motioned to a
side street. Moreover, although the immediately local election was over,
the streets were grievously crowded for some reason or other--and surely
there was never seen a population more serenely indifferent to the blast of
a motor-horn! They were, perhaps, inured to peril by the tramcars, swifter
in towns than any motor-car would dare to be, heavier by a long way, and
exceptionally dangerous by reason of the length and height of the moving
veil they draw across the view. At any rate they would not move out of the
way.
Arriving, we were in a far more appreciative mood than that of Mr. Charles
Dickens when he became a guest at the "Great White Horse," and wrote the
account of Mr. Pickwick's arrival on the coach of the elder Weller. We
found no labyrinths of uncarpeted passages, no mouldy ill-lighted rooms, no
small dens for sleeping in, but rather a kindly welcome and attention,
distinctly good rooms, a dining-room having plenty of space, fire and
abundant cheer, and a reasonably moderate bill to discharge at the end of
our stay. Yet I doubt not that the edifice, built round a cobbled courtyard
that is roofed over, the bar parlour on the far side of the yard from the
door, where a good many of the citizens congregate of an evening, the
office window at which mine hostess receives her guests, are precisely the
same as when Boz visited Ipswich. In this view I differ from Mr. Dutt; but
the probability is that the alterations to which he refers were made
before, not after, Dickens saw the house. Dickens did not like the place at
all, that is clear. If there be doubts whether Ipswich was the original of
Eatanswill, as Mr. Percy Fitzgerald suggests, there are none about the
"Great White Horse," which is, of course, mentioned, and abused from floor
to garret, nay, from cellar to garret: for is not "the worst possible port"
mentioned--by name? We found things otherwise, but then it was not the
misfortune of any of us to look out of bed and see "a middle-aged lady, in
yellow curl-papers, busily engaged in brushing what ladies call their
back-hair." It would be easy enough to miss the way in the recesses of the
"Great White Horse"; in fact, to be frank, I did so myself, although I
neither entered the wrong room nor got into the wrong bed. But the censure
of Dickens generally has no reference to the present state of affairs at
this classic hostelry; nay, more, such is the irony of fate, the bad name
given by Dickens to this house is now its chiefest recommendation: prints
of Leech's pictures adorn every wall, and the telegraphic address of the
hotel is "Pickwick," Ipswich. Thus has railing been converted into
blessing; thus is it proved more profitable to be abused by a great writer
than to remain uncensured and ignored. Perhaps Mr. Percy Fitzgerald could
oblige, as the saying goes, by explaining what the real meaning of his
hero's attitude was. It must have had some deeper source than a stuffy
bedroom and a bad dinner, or else the essential kindliness of the
Dickensian attitude towards everything except cruelty and injustice must be
cast aside as an exploded belief. Certainly no public writer would dare to
write in 1906 of any hotel as Dickens wrote of the "Great White Horse" in
the thirties of the last century; and perhaps that is not entirely to be
regretted, for hotel-keepers really are our fellow-creatures, unwilling as
some advocates of the Temperance Cause may be to admit the truth.
By the way, why is the "Great White Horse" an hotel sign in East
Anglia?--not that I can endorse the description of it as "a stone statue of
some rampacious animal, with flowing mane and tail, distantly resembling an
insane cart-horse." It seems to me quite reasonably like to a Suffolk
Punch, except in colour, and one finds Phidias never, although Apelles
sometimes, over inn doors. But why a white horse? One expects such signs in
the parts about Berks, where the classic Vale is named after the gigantic
symbol on the northward side of the Downs, of which a simple explanation
has become impossible, owing to the tiresome growth of knowledge. But why,
despising all commonplace explanations, have we encountered a "White Horse"
in Suffolk? Well, one of the many explanations of the White Horse _par
excellence_ is that it was taken from the horse delineated on Philip's
stater, which was copied a good deal in Britain, and an explanation of the
"White Horse"--I beg its pardon, the "Great White Horse"--of Ipswich may be
that it had its origin in the horse figured on some of the Icenian coins
that have been discovered in East Anglia. Or, again, it may be simply a
survival of the ancient Saxon totem. Some such desultory speculation as
this may serve to soothe the mind of an evening at Ipswich--not that after
motoring all day the mind needs much soothing. But I would counsel all male
motorists to burn their last incense of tobacco, as my friend and I did, in
the warm bar-parlour on the side of the courtyard over against the main
door, for thus shall they see the native of Ipswich in his natural state.
The discovery of "this amazing England," as Mr. Kipling has said well, is
the main joy of motoring; still in the evening one may do much worse things
than pursue the proper study of mankind in easy-going mood, and a
provincial bar-parlour is not a bad place in which to do it.
To Ipswich I have been more than once since that night of freezing cold in
January, and to Bury St. Edmunds also, and more features of both will find
a place in later narratives; but of each there are a few practical things
to be said which must not be delayed. On a second visit to Bury, made in
the course of the most troubled and delightful tour of my existence so far,
I lay at the ancient "Angel" with mighty satisfaction and to the remarkably
small minishing of my store of sovereigns. On a second visit to Ipswich I
was hospitably entertained by a local gentleman at the "Crown and Anchor,"
because he thought it was the best hotel in Ipswich, and behold the fare
was very good! By the same gentleman I was introduced to oysters, in a
little shop near the Butter Market, the best I ever ate, and to hand-made
gloves in a little shop hard by which have motored many a merry mile since
then. There need be no hesitation in advertising them. They are made by a
widow and her daughter out of soft and strong Cape leather, and with them,
it is to be feared, the industry will die, since apprentices will not come
to them in these degenerate days. Since then I have exhibited these gloves,
during the Scottish "Reliability" trials, to a casual acquaintance, and her
criticism, although strictly irrelevant, was too witty to be omitted.
"Mphm! they look as if you had made them yourself." Ipswich gloves, then,
are not for the dandy, but for the motorist they are hard to beat.