Mecklenburg-Strelitz, arrived for the first time in England, in 1761,
to marry George the Third. One German princess is very like another
in the pages of history, and the likeness remains even when they
become queens, so that it is not a little difficult to disentangle a
Caroline from a Charlotte. Their virtues are of the same drab domestic
order, and their faces partake of the common fund of unilluminated
dulness distributed between the Mecklenburg-Strelitzes, the
Sonderburg-Augustenburgs, and the dozens of other twopenny-halfpenny
principalities made familiar by German princely marriages and
intermarryings. On their mere merits, these personages would find no
place here, though they travelled all their lives up and down the
road; but in the circumstances of this particular Princess Charlotte's
journey there are some incidents worth mentioning. She landed at
Harwich, and comes into our road at Colchester, September 7, 1761. At
Colchester she was presented with a box of eringo-root, the famous
local production highly valued for the cure of pulmonary diseases,
prepared from the root of the sea holly. Graciously receiving this in a
box "parfumed and guilt," her carriage swept on towards Witham, where
she stayed the night at a seat then owned by Lord Abercorn, supping
with open doors so that all who would might gaze upon their future
Queen. Next day the journey to London was resumed. The King's coach
was in readiness at Romford, and into it she changed. At Mile End a
squadron of Life Guards was in waiting as an escort, and from that
point the procession was viewed by thousands. But by this time the
September day was closing. The Duchess of Hamilton, who accompanied the
Princess, looked at her watch. "We shall hardly have time to dress for
the wedding," she said.
"The wedding?"
"Yes, madam; it is to be at twelve."
On that the Princess fainted, as well she might. It really took place
at 9 p.m., instead of three hours later. The King, it is upon record,
was a little disappointed at the first sight of his bride; but that has
generally been the way with our Royal marriages. The eldest son of this
amiable pair, George the Fourth, similarly saw his bride for the first
time practically on the steps of the altar, and his disappointment
was keen. "No sooner," we read, "had he approached her than, as if to
subdue the qualms of irrepressible disgust, he desired the dignified
envoy to bring him a glass of brandy." The Princess, we are told,
"expressed surprise," which statement requires no credulity for belief.
Henry the Eighth's disappointment when he saw Anne of Cleves was
reflected in the words in which he likened her to a "Flanders mare."
Two years later, in 1763, we find Dr Johnson and his inevitable Boswell
journeying down the road; Boswell on his way to Harwich for Utrecht,
and the Doctor good-naturedly accompanying him as far as that seaport.
They set out by coach on the 5th of August, early in the morning;
among their fellow-travellers a fat, elderly gentlewoman and a young
Dutchman, both inclined to conversation. Dining at an inn on the way,
the lady remarked that she had done her best to educate her children,
and particularly that she never suffered them to be a moment idle.
"I wish, madam," said Johnson, "you would educate me too; for I have
been an idle fellow all my life."
"I am sure, sir," said she, "you have not been idle;" which was a
mere empty compliment, for she had not the least idea whom she was
addressing.
"Nay, madam," rejoined the Doctor, "it is very true; and that gentleman
there," pointing to Boswell, "has been idle. He was idle at Edinburgh.
His father sent him to Glasgow, where he continued to be idle. He then
came to London, where he has been very idle; and now he is going to
Utrecht, where he will be as idle as ever."
At this, Boswell was very wroth, and asked Johnson, in an aside, how he
could expose him so.
"Pooh, pooh," retorted the immortal Samuel, "they know nothing about
you, and will think of it no more." Nor, in all probability, did they.
In this manner they travelled, the gentlewoman talking violently
against the Roman Catholics and the horrors of the Inquisition;
Johnson, to the astonishment of all the passengers, save Boswell, who
knew his ways, defending the Inquisition and its methods with "false
doctrines." This would appear to have annoyed the rest of the company,
for Boswell relates that Johnson presently appeared to be very intent
upon ancient geography. Not so intent, however, but that he noticed
Boswell giving a shilling to the coachman at the end of one of the
stages, when it was the custom to give only sixpence. The great man
took Boswell aside and scolded him for it, saying that what he had
done would make the coachman dissatisfied with all the rest of the
passengers, who had given him no more than his due.
They stopped at Colchester a night, at an inn unfortunately not
specified, Johnson talking of the town with veneration for having stood
a siege for Charles the First.
The last great occasion on the road, before railways took its traffic
away, was the funeral, in 1821, of George the Fourth's Queen. Caroline
of Brunswick had landed at Greenwich twenty-seven years before: her
body was embarked for Brunswick on August 16, 1821, after a hurried
three days' journey from Kensington. So many years have passed by
since the stormy times when the nation was divided between partisans of
the King on one side and the Queen on the other--both parties equally
violent--that the long and bitter quarrels between the "First Gentleman
in Europe" and the most vulgar and indiscreet princess of modern times
have become historic, and no longer divide families, or cause fathers
to cut their sons off with a shilling, as they did when the trial of
the Queen was a recent event. George, Prince Regent and King, was no
saint; Caroline, Princess and Queen, was at least odiously vulgar and
utterly wanting in dignity and the commonest dictates of prudence. They
were not worth quarrelling about, but their feuds were taken up by
parties and made political missiles of, so that even the occasion of
the Queen's funeral was made the excuse for a riot by her followers,
who were indignant at seeing her remains hurried out of the country,
as they thought, without proper respect. The Queen died on the 7th of
August, and it was decided to take her body to Brunswick. "Indecent
haste" was the expression used by the _Times_ of that day in describing
the funeral arrangements for the 14th, but that journal was a most
violent enemy of the then Government and had always supported the Queen
and vilified the King as far as it could safely be done.
It was proposed to complete the journey of eighty miles between
Kensington and Harwich in two days, and the _Times_ furiously bellowed
in its reports that the procession was hurried through London at a
trot. However that may be, certainly the pace was decently slow when
on the open road. Ilford was reached, for instance, at 6·15 that
afternoon, but Romford, only five and a half miles further on, not
until 7·45; an extravagantly slow rate of progression, even for a
funeral. At Romford the cortège was met by sympathisers with blazing
torches, who stood on guard round the coffin, while the wearied escort
and the few mourners refreshed at a roadside inn.
At eleven o'clock the journey was resumed by the light of a full moon
which shone in splendour from a cloudless summer sky. Throughout the
night they travelled, coming into Chelmsford at four o'clock in the
morning. Here the coffin was placed in the church until a start was
made again, seven hours later. At last Colchester was reached, at
five o'clock in the afternoon, the famished escort leaving the hearse
unguarded in the High Street, while they took their fill at the "Three
Cups." Thus, in its squalor and irreverence, the passing of this Queen
of England resembled the funeral of a pauper, without kith or kin.
It had been proposed to complete the journey to Harwich that day,
but, after violent disputes in the street between opposing factions,
it was agreed to defer the departure until the next morning, and to
deposit the coffin meanwhile in St Peter's Church. Inside that sacred
building, disputes broke out afresh, one party wishing to affix a plate
on the coffin-lid, bearing the inscription, "Caroline of Brunswick, the
injured Queen of England," while the other vehemently objected. The
quarrel was finally settled by agreeing to postpone fixing the plate
until after the embarkation.
With the start made the following morning at half-past five, this
melancholy procession leaves the Norwich Road, and history goes with
it. The tale is done, the colophon reached.
XXIV
IF we seek some touchstone by which to test the progress of a century
or so in civilisation, there is scarce a better than found in
comparison between the condition of the roads in old and modern times.
That Waller could, in all sincerity, speak of "vile Essexian roads"
is not remarkable: he was a poet, dealt in superlatives and lived in
the seventeenth century. But that Arthur Young, a hundred years later,
could with equal sincerity, and in more emphatic language, describe
Essex roads as "rocky lanes, with ruts of inconceivable depth," is
startling. It was in 1768 he penned that indictment, adding that they
were so overgrown with trees as to be impervious to the sun, and strewn
with stones "as big as a horse, and full of abominable holes." It were,
he concludes, a misuse of language to call them turnpikes, for they
were rich in ponds of liquid dirt; while loose flints and vile grips
cut across to drain off the water made the traveller's pilgrimage a
weariness.
The modern reader, perusing all these manifold sins and wickednesses
of the roads, rather wonders how they could all have been crowded
on to such truly vile ways, and if a stone were as big as a horse,
how room could have been found beside it for holes, ponds and other
objectionable features. But Arthur Young was a truthful man in general.
To-day the Essex high roads are as near perfection as any in the home
counties, even though the byways be steep and rough and more than
usually winding.
It is in these byways that he who seeks rural Essex shall find. The
dramatic suddenness and completeness with which, a few hundred yards
from the high road, the sophisticated wayside towns and hamlets are
exchanged for the unspoiled rusticity of the original villages is
surprising. In these lanes the older rustics talk and think much as
their grandfathers did, but the rising generation unhappily do not,
and the Essex rustic in general, like his fellows elsewhere, has
almost wholly discarded the old dress of the peasantry. Only the very
old or the more remote yet wear the smock-frock--the "round frock,"
or the "gaberdine," as they called it--that was once as honourable a
distinction of the ploughmen, herds, or carters as are the uniforms of
our soldiers and sailors.
The time is long past since a clean smock-frock, corded breeches,
worsted stockings and well-greased lace-up boots formed the approved
rural costume for Sundays or holidays, just as the same articles of
apparel in a "second-best" condition made the workaday wear. The
Sunday costume of the agricultural labourer is now a cheap and clumsy
travesty of the clothes worn by townsfolk, and in hideous contrast
with his surroundings. Exactly what it is like may be seen on any
advertisement hoarding in the outskirts of Chelmsford, Colchester and
lesser towns, where pictorial posters bid Giles go to Shoddy's for
cheap outfits. Sunday mornings find him flaunting his finery in the
village street; his would-be stylish boots creaking, his every article
of wear writ large with vulgarity. Often he carries gloves in those
large hands of his, rough with honest week-day toil, and a pair may
thus last him for years--for he dare not attempt to put them on. Would
that he equally purchased his cheap cigars for show and refrained from
smoking them!
But there the village dandy is. Often his pocket-handkerchief is
scented; generally his hair is glossy with grease; and he would not
consider himself fully equipped without watch and chain, scarf-pin,
ring and walking stick. To grease his boots he would be ashamed. _They_
must be brightly polished, even though his manners are not, and his
language defiles the village street what time the bells are ringing
to church. Such is Young England in the villages at the dawn of the
Twentieth Century. These things may spell Progress, but they are rather
pitiful.
It is a little difficult, in presenting a sketch of his ancestor of
a hundred years or more ago, to avoid drawing too favourable a view
of him; but the rustic in old times certainly seems to have matched
much better with his surroundings than is the case nowadays. He made
no attempts to dress up to town standards, and if he wanted to shine
above his fellows did so by virtue of superior neatness only. Perhaps
he had the finer instincts of the two, or more likely lacked the
opportunities for bad taste that surround his descendants. Certainly,
if we are to believe in the origin of the smock-frock, as put forward
by some antiquaries, we must sorrowfully admit that the rustic's remote
ancestor had as great a longing for unsuitable display in dress as
can possibly be charged to the present generation. The smock-frock
is, in fact, traced back by some to the ecclesiastical garments worn
at Mass by deacons and sub-deacons, at the time when the Reformation
swept vestments out of every village church in the land. Those who are
familiar with genuine old smock-frocks have noticed the elaborate and
often beautiful needlework on collar and breast. The devices appear to
have a traditional likeness, all over the country, and consist either
of Celtic-looking whorls, or of semi-decorative flower forms, or of
lozenge patterns. The comparative simplicity or elaboration of this
needlework depended solely upon the fancy, or the time at command, of
the wearer's women-folk whose work it was. Whence came this tradition?
It is thought from the tunicles of the minor clergy, which were
certainly decorated in the same position, if not in similar patterns.
When the minor belongings of the Church became the spoil of the
villages, Hodge and Giles found themselves the proud possessors of the
strange garments, for which they could find at first no better use than
for Sunday wear. A striking appearance they must have made in them,
down the village street, the envy of their less fortunate fellows.
When the looted vestments grew shabby they must have been used for
everyday wear, and so have set the fashions in smock-frocks, both in
shape and decoration, for centuries to come. If it be thought that the
costume was rather extravagant, it can only be asked, is not that of
the modern Sunday morning yokel extravagant also?
The rustic of long ago was a man of dense ignorance and dark
superstitions. No one county was then more guilty than another in that
respect, but East Anglians, and perhaps especially the Essex bucolics,
are still, despite their veneer of civilisation, sunk in uncanny
beliefs. Witches still "overlook" folks in Essex hamlets, and spells
are cast on cattle and horses, or unhappy fowls are blighted by the
Evil Eye. Consequently the learned professions of Witch-Doctor and
Wise Women are not yet extinct. Their existence is not likely to be
discovered by the stranger, but they thrive, in limited numbers, even
in these days of pills and patent medicines.
Board Schools are supposed to be educating Young England into a dead
monotony of speech, but it will be long before they complete the horrid
work. In Essex, indeed, we may not unreasonably think it a task beyond
the power of teachers and inspectors, who if they have not succeeded,
after thirty years working of the Elementary Education Act, in inducing
the lower-class Londoners to say "yes" for "yuss," together with other
linguistic enormities, are not likely to be successful in abolishing
the very marked and stubborn Essex shibboleths. It may not generally
be known that much of the so-called "Cockney" talk derives from the
Essex dialect. From Essex especially comes that curious perversity
of the unruly member which in many cases insists upon pronouncing
the letter A as I. The lower-class Londoner and the Essex peasant
are unanimous in enunciating A as I in all words where that letter
retains its open sound and its individuality. Thus, in the words "baby"
"favourite," "made" and "native," for instance, the letter becomes I;
and the Fleet Street newsboy, shouting his "spusshul uxtry piper," can
legitimately call cousins, if he wishes it, with the Essex lad at the
plough-tail.
Where A is sounded broadly, or in cases like the word "was," in which
it masquerades as O, or where the letter is absolutely silent, or not
fully pronounced, as in "beast" and "maternal," this peculiarity does
not appear.
The effect is sometimes grotesque, as, for example, near Colchester,
where the villages of Layer Marney, Layer Breton, and Layer de la Hay
are always spoken of as Liyer, the last mentioned becoming Liyer de la
High.
Nor is pronunciation the only singular feature of Essex talk, as
those who keep their ears alert in these parts will soon find. The
oddest phrases are matters of everyday use, and the Essex peasant can
no more help using the word "together," in season and out, than he
can help being hungry before meals or sleepy by bedtime. "Together,"
as employed by the Essex peasant, is a word absolutely meaningless;
a kind of linguistic excrescence which, like a wart or a boil, is
neither useful nor beautiful. When a ploughman says he is going to
plough "that there field together," he does not mean to imply that he
is about to plough it together with some other land, or with a party
of other ploughmen. He simply adds the word from force of habit, and
from hearing his father and grandfather before him so use it, in almost
every sentence, as a sort of verbal makeweight. The present writer has
had the good fortune to hear a supremely ludicrous use of this Bœotian
habit of speech. It was market-day at Colchester, and Stanway village
had emptied itself in the direction of the town. A dog rolled dustily
in the sunny road, and the historian of these things luxuriously
quaffed his "large lemon" on the bench outside the village inn. As
Artemus Ward might have said, "orl was peas," when there entered upon
the scene a countryman, evidently known to the landlord. He walked into
the bar, and, surprised to find mine host in solitary state, exclaimed,
"What, all alone together, bor?"
"Yes," replied the landlord, in no wise astonished at this
extraordinary expression, "the missus has gone to Colchester together."
"Did my missus go with her?" asked the rustic.
"No," rejoined the landlord, "she went by herself."
In this countryman's talk we find a word belonging more especially
to Norfolk and Suffolk. This is the word, "bor," a diminutive for
neighbour.
XXV
STANWAY is approached along a flat stretch, past Mark's Tey, which,
without being itself quite on the road, has sent out modern and
extremely ugly brick tentacles to line the way. For an incredible
distance along the flat the timber tower of Mark's Tey church is
visible, amid an inchoate mass of railway signal masts and puffs of
smoke. Whistlings, screechings, crashings and rumblings proceed from
that direction, for this is a junction of the Great Eastern with the
Colne Valley Railway, and the station, by the way, where the lady in
Thackeray's _Lamentable Ballad of the Foundling of Shoreditch_ appeared
with the baby which she eventually left behind her. It is this busy
junction that has caused the hideous outcrop of mean houses along the
road to render the village of the old De Marcas something new and
strange. Mark's Tey is at a junction of roads as well as of rails, for
the road from Braintree and Bishop's Stortford falls in here.
Copford's solitary houses by the way give scarce a hint of the village
nearly a mile off, whose little church formerly owned a terrifying
relic, in the shape of a human skin nailed on its door; a skin that
had been the personal property of some unfortunate straggler from the
hordes of marauding Danes that once infested the district, of whom we
have already heard legends at Kelvedon and Gore Pit. His Saxon captors
must have flayed him with a ferocious delight and nailed up his cuticle
with precisely the same satisfaction as that of the gamekeeper who
wages war upon stoats and weazels and other vermin, and hangs their
bodies on the barn door. But there must have been a bitter day of
reckoning for those Saxons when the sea-rovers came this way again and
saw in what fashion that doorway was decorated.
[Illustration: Near Mark's Tey.]
Copford and its outlying houses lie at the crest of a gentle descent
into the valley of a rivulet which finds its way into the Colne.
It stands, as its name implies, overlooking some ford which, once
important, has, in the gradual draining of the country and the
shrinkage of streams, now lost all significance. Stanway adjoins it,
and lies along the descent, in the hollow and up the corresponding
rise on the other side, where its church stands in a forbidding
loneliness. The name of Stanway is sufficient warranty of this being,
thus far, the Roman road. It is, however, not so certain that the
remaining four miles of the existing highway from this point into
Colchester follow the course taken by the Romans; and, indeed, the
later researches of archæologists go far to prove that the original
way into Roman Colchester avoided the intervening village of Lexden
altogether, and, curving eastwards, avoided what may then have been
a marsh, to take the higher ground over a portion of Lexden Heath;
bending westwards again and crossing the site of the present road
between where the grammar school and the hospital now stand. From this
point it seems to have crossed by where the Lordsland Nursery grounds
stood until recently built over, to the ancient Roman gateway and
bastion in the western wall of the town, long known as Colking's, or
King Coel's Castle, but originally the Decuman Gate of Roman times.
The course followed by this old Roman way is lined on either side with
sepulchral remains, and seems to have once been a great cemetery.
Wherever the ground is disturbed the relics of some soldier or citizen
of Colonia are found, some dating back to the foundation of the colony,
nearly nineteen centuries ago. The most remarkable among them are to be
seen in the museum at Colchester Castle. There--the most human relic
of them all--is the touching monument to M. Favonius, a Centurion of
the Twentieth Legion, discovered in 1871 between the hospital and
the grammar school, at a depth of 3 feet below the surface, and at a
distance of 10 feet from the old Roman road. It is a sculptured stone,
4 feet in height, with the figure of the Centurion himself carved on
it, in high relief. It is evidently a portrait of him. He stands in
full military costume, his cloak hanging from his shoulders, his sword
and dagger by his side. The inscription, almost as sharp as on the day
when it was cut, nearly nineteen hundred years ago, tells us that the
monument was erected by two of his servants, Verecundus and Novicius.
They call him "facilis," the "easy" or "good-natured." It is surely a
sweet and touching thing that when all other record of that soldier has
perished, we should yet know him to have been a kindly creature.