his native town, he would find it, by contrast with other times,
astonishingly dull. No badgering of Quakers, no cock-fighting, no
scold-ducking, and no more bribery and corruption at Parliamentary
elections—or at least it is not done in the old approved style, when at
every inn you could call for what you liked, get riotously, hilariously,
and finally dead, drunk, and have the cost of the debauch chalked up to
the Duke of Grafton down at Euston, whose pocket-borough Thetford was.
Alas! the borough representation went, a whole generation ago, and the
town is merged into a mere county division. Dull, sir! Why, damme, yes.
Not even an Assize and the spectacle of a hanging in these days, and the
coaches and the post-chaises that used to awaken the echoes of the
streets at night are all resolved into firewood. As for Thetford ever
having been a fashionable resort, the world certainly has forgotten all
about it, and when you hint it was so, looks incredulous. But the Spring
Walk remains as a voucher for that short-lived fashionable patronage.
Most delightful of all the roads and paths in and near Thetford, the
Spring Walk owes its existence to that hope of erecting the town into an
East Anglian rival of Tunbridge Wells, Bath, or Cheltenham, which was a
feature of local history from the early part of the eighteenth century
until the first quarter of the nineteenth had almost run its course.
That was a time when every locality fortunate enough to possess waters
impregnated with iron or sulphur to the requisite degree of nastiness
strove desperately to attain the position of a Spa. Relics of that
old-time eagerness to secure a share of the fortunes of Bath and other
well-established resorts of this kind are plentiful all over England,
and at most places where, owing to subterranean complications, with
horrible chemical results, the water is not fit to drink, you shall now
find the neglected and decaying Pump Houses and Spa Rooms then hastily
built, with the hope of attracting the fashionable invalids and
hypochondriacs of the day. It was in most cases a hope doomed to
disappointment, for invalided fashion is gregarious, and then, even more
than now, loved to herd together, to discuss symptoms and exchange
scandal. Even had it been of other mood, there was not, a century ago,
sufficient fashion to fully furnish a tithe of those forlorn hopes; so
that many Spas of even supreme nastiness which should otherwise have
secured success, failed to attract visitors in sufficient numbers to
make the enterprise remunerative.
The chalybeate waters of Thetford were known so early as 1714, and were
slightly tinged with iron and moderately tonic. Arising from springs on
the north bank of the Upper Ouse, they were in local repute long before
the necessity arose for every medical man to have his pet curative
resort, and might have remained obscure had it not been for one
Professor Accum, who, as an early nineteenth-century boomster, began to
send patients to Thetford, long before that century was out of its
teens.
Thetford rose to the occasion. In 1818 the Mayor at his own expense
constructed a river-side path leading to the “Spring House,” and planted
it with those plane-trees which have grown into the delightful avenue
that now forms his best monument. In August of that year the spring was
opened to the “free and unrestricted use of the poor,” and the sick, and
large numbers of all classes flocked to it. Still larger numbers were
attracted in 1819, when Professor Accum published a work on the virtues
of the Thetford waters. Success seemed assured. The water was even
bottled and sent, carefully packed, to all parts, as a panacea for
dyspepsia; but it was when these springs failed to cure ophthalmia,
rheumatism and broken bones, and to work other impossibilities, that
failure came and fond hopes withered and decayed. The public expected
miracles, but there has been nothing of a miraculous nature in East
Anglia since the marvellous times of Edmund, King, Martyr, and Saint,
when credulity, faith, and the imagination of the monks went hand in
hand, and produced astounding results; and so the Thetford Spa presently
ceased to be. Even those dyspeptic patients who derived, or thought they
derived, benefit from the bottled waters fell away when they found they
had long been humbugged by a number of practical humorists, who,
combining a hateful cynicism with an abominable laziness, bottled off
their healing draughts from other and handier, but quite ineffective,
places.
Thetford at this day shows no prominent signs of its old Spa. The
“Bath,” or “Spring,” house remains, but it is now a private residence,
and few know or care to enquire, the origin of that beautiful plane-tree
avenue leading beside the river to the “Nuns’ Bridges.”
Thetford in these times of ours is a very sober place indeed, has given
up all attempts to attract the fashionables, and relies for its
prosperity upon Burrell’s engineering works, where you can buy a
beautiful traction-engine any day, and upon the Pulp Mills, which turn
out unbreakable domestic articles in a wholesale manner calculated to
make all interested in the manufacture of china and glass wish they had
chosen some other trade.
There have been Thetfordians in the past to do wonderful things and make
some little stir in their day. Let us begin with the smallest of them.
In 1782, “Robert Bartley, of Thetford,” then in his sixty-third year, is
recorded to have walked the eighty-one miles to London in twenty-four
hours, and to have walked back the following day. He died, aged
sixty-six, in 1785.
There were some excellent walkers at that time, for in 1813 the Thetford
Volunteers performed a remarkable feat of endurance. They marched the
fifty miles to Yarmouth in one day. Fortunately, no enemy was there,
else those exhausted pedestrians might have fared ill.
But this is trifling with biography. Thetford’s most famous—or at least
most notorious—son is Tom Paine
XXXVII
THEY still show you—if you are persistent enough to at length find those
who know or care anything at all about it—the birthplace of Tom Paine,
in White Hart Street, but it must be confessed, gladly or with
regret—one is not quite sure which emotion is pre-eminent—that Paine,
that stormy petrel of late eighteenth-century politics, has quite faded
out of popular recollection in this his native town. Who, anywhere,
knows nowadays much more about Tom Paine than that he was the author of
a work, “The Rights of Man” which no one ever reads nowadays and
therefore is generally thought to be much worse than it really is? For
the rest, there remains a vague impression that he was a “wicked”
person, and, above all, not “respectable,” which last consideration, of
course, sufficiently deters the mass of people from seeking to learn
anything about him. Yet in his day he was a most remarkable person, and
exercised an enormous influence.
Tom Paine—no one ever seems to have called him “Thomas”—was born in
1737, the son of a Quaker staymaker. They were quite humble people, the
Paines, and their household so dull and cramped that Tom, early a rebel
against authority, ran away from home in his nineteenth year and went
for a sailor. He fought on board the man-o’-war _Terrible_ in 1756, but
authority, stalking rampant, so to speak, on the quarter-deck, was, of
course, not at all to his mind, and he left the Navy. Turning then to
his handicraft of staymaking, he is found, a fleeting figure of unrest,
in London, Dover, and Sandwich. He married in 1759, and his wife died in
the following year.
Staymaking seems then to have lost all attractions for him, for in 1761
he succeeded in obtaining the modest appointment of supernumerary
officer in the Excise, and was stationed in this his native town. How
_very_ modest that post really was may be sufficiently explained when it
is said that the pay was £50 a year, and find your own horse! If that
was an advance upon his earlier employment—why, then, staymaking must
have been a poor thing. Paine does not seem to have taken his duties
very seriously. Could any one, at the price? So, after he had been
transferred to stations at Grantham and Alford, he was at length, in
1765, dismissed for neglect. The neglect was rather serious, consisting
as it did in filling up returns of examinations he had not made.
Two years of wandering followed. Staymaking at Diss and ushering in
London filled in the time until 1767, when by some strange chance he
secured another appointment in the Excise. This billet would have taken
him to Grampound, in Cornwall, but that was too far West, and so he held
off until the following year, when a similar post offered at Lewes.
There he lodged with a tobacconist, who died the following year, and two
years later Paine married his late landlord’s daughter. She and her
mother opened a small grocery business, and Paine contributed his small
share towards keeping up the establishment. But it was not in the scheme
of life laid down by the Fates for Paine that he should be allowed to
jog comfortably on through an obscure provincial existence of this
humdrum nature. He became a noted figure in local political debates, and
in 1772 the excisemen, who had long chafed under a combination of
arduous work and small pay, found in Paine a champion who could display
their grievances to advantage. He wrote and issued a pamphlet, setting
forth their circumstances and demands, and eventually found himself
dismissed from the service. He petitioned the Board of Excise for
reinstatement, but they had no use for firebrands, and his appeals were
disregarded.
Meanwhile, domestic differences had been at work, and that lack of
conjugal agreement it has been left for modern times to gracefully term
“incompatability of temperament” had caused a more or less amicable
separation.
This general upheaval and ruination of Paine’s little world sent him
drifting to London, where he met Dr. Franklin, who found him eager to
try his luck in what were then the North American Colonies, and so gave
him introductions to Philadelphia folks who might be of use. At
Philadelphia he landed, accordingly, in 1774, and presently found his
way into an editorial chair, at a salary of £50 a year, which we may
perhaps look upon as an advance, because he certainly had not to support
a horse, as well as himself, out of it, as in old Excise days.
He had reached America at a critical juncture of affairs. The Home
Government had exasperated the colonists to the last degree by seeking
to tax them in support of an Exchequer depleted by the world-wide
warfares not long before brought to a conclusion. It mattered nothing
that those wars had been fought for the very existence of England and
her colonies alike: the New Englanders were not patriotic when their
pockets were touched, and would not pay, and the Home authorities
tactlessly insisted that they should. The result was armed rebellion, an
inglorious war, and the independence of the United States. In all the
many and involved political intrigues of the rebellion and the setting
up of the new nation Paine had a part, and even did some service for the
revolted colonists in the field. But it was as a negotiator,
wire-puller, and general go-between he shone. From his trivial editorial
throne he raised himself into the status of a personage by
pamphleteering, and conducted himself as an equal with Washington and
the other leaders. Nay, more; it was he who, seeing how eager France was
to aid the colonies against England with men, munitions of war, and in
diplomatic ways, suggested and did actually in most skilful manner,
negotiate a loan from the French Government to the States. For these
services he was granted a salary of $800, equivalent to £160. Clearly
negotiators were cheap in America in those days! But although he wrought
such yeoman service to the cause, his fellow-revolutionaries did not
love their Paine. He stood for negation in everything. Kingdoms,
principalities, and powers, aristocracies and religion were as naught to
him; while, for the most part, the successful colonists had no quarrel
with anything but the British Government. They were pious and
God-fearing: he was an atheist. Washington and his lieutenants were
essentially of the aristocratic class, and with the prejudices of their
order: Paine was—as modern slang would put it—“no class,” and it is
clear that although his associates were glad of his lucid and pungent
pen, they were not desirous of close association with him.
Paine returned to England, in 1787, and made acquaintance with Fox and
others of those who, had they not been blinded by political animosities,
must needs have looked upon him as what he really was, a traitor to the
land of his birth. By this it will be seen that the “Pro-Boers” of
modern times are no novel phenomena: they have always existed as “pro”
something or other likely to be injurious to their own country. It is
rather a pity, when you consider it, that Paine was not properly hanged
when he set foot again on these shores; but he was not molested until
the second part of his atheistical book, “The Rights of Man,” was
published, in 1793. _Then_ he had to flee the country, a fugitive from
the wrath of a nation that could endure a traitor, but found it
impossible to forgive one who denied his God.
Where should such an one seek refuge but in Paris? There he became
“Citizen Paine,” and consorted with Marat, Robespierre, and others;
publishing his “Age of Reason” in midst of that hurly-burly of
revolutionary jealousies. The victory of one party and the downfall of
another brought him in that land of liberty an unexpected introduction
to a Parisian dungeon, where he lay for ten months, and narrowly escaped
the guillotine. It was only through the strong attitude taken up by his
American friends, and by the false claim of his being an American
citizen, that he became again a free man. The year 1798 found him still
in France, and hoping much from that rising star, Bonaparte, in whose
mind it is not at all improbable he planted the first thought of
invading England. Bonaparte then stood for freedom, and Paine looked
forward to “proclaiming liberty at Thetford” under his protection; but,
alas for that beautiful dream! Bonaparte, the Republican general, became
Napoleon the Emperor and autocrat, and it grew evident at last, even to
Paine, that it was not by his aid this land of slaves and helots was to
be set free.
And what did Thetford think of it all? It is rather grievous to
acknowledge Thetford was so sunk in slavery that it did not recognise
the fact, and desired to be let alone. It sat in chains and misery, all
unconscious! Thrice unhappy Thetford!! Folk in the taverns and in the
streets even expressed a contempt and dislike of “Tum Paine,” and loudly
proclaimed their earnest desire to duck him in the river that runs so
handy, through the town. But Tom never came back, and so the community
lost its projected sport. He returned to America in 1802, and did not
linger to watch the fortunes of that flotilla Napoleon was at last
fitting out for the conquest of England. Seven years later, in 1809, he
died in New York, and was buried at New Rochelle, but the unrest of his
life followed him beyond the grave; for Cobbett, himself a reforming
Radical, but on slightly more suave lines than Paine, in 1819, as a
hero-worshipper, exhumed his bones and brought them to Liverpool.
Cobbett, twenty-three years earlier, had denounced him as “base,
malignant, treacherous, unnatural, and blasphemous.” There his stock of
adjectives ran out, and he brought the indictment to a conclusion. How
the satirical shade of Paine must have chuckled at this
right-about-face!
When the available property of Cobbett’s son was seized for debt, in
1836, these poor relics formed a part of his belongings. Thence they
passed into the hands of a Mr. Tilly, but since 1844 have not been heard
of.
[Illustration: THE “OLD HOUSE,” THETFORD.]
So much for Paine. The street of his birth, the street that leads out of
the town on the way to Norwich, is still old-fashioned. There stands yet
the old “White Hart,” and a handsome house of two pointed gables, once
said to have been the “Fleece.” Lower down, opposite the “Bell,” a house
now occupied by an ironmonger was once the “George”; and midway is a
pre-eminently ancient building whose age is tacitly recognised as
transcendent, in the name of “the old house,” given it locally. Its
timbered frontage probably belongs to the fourteenth century. Traces of
an old watchman’s box remain, and dark traditions survive of a chain
being stretched across the street at night, from this to the opposite
house. Something more, perhaps, than tradition, for the staples from
which the chain hung are still pointed out. No records remain to tell
the why or wherefore of that chain, but we have only to recall the misty
past again to find in the solitary position of Thetford, surrounded by
heaths—and those heaths frequented, to put it mildly, by
undesirables—much virtue in chains, and comfort unspeakable to the
listening midnight ears of nightcapped burgesses in the watchman’s
resonant “Twelve o’clock, and a starlight night! All’s well.”
XXXVIII
WHEN the modern tourist leaves Thetford, he does so without a thrill on
the threshold, and the only thing to give him pause is the rather
bewildering choice of roads on the barren-looking rise where the town
ends. Every way leads to open heath, even now, but every turning does
not, as of yore, bring you butt against a highwayman. I, for one, do not
regret the disappearance of _that_ feature of the old days, and am
content to forego all such thrillful encounters.
Two miles out of Thetford one came in those old days to the toll-house.
The old relic stood until 1902, and was something of a curiosity to the
instructed in local lore, for it stood on the boundary of the parishes
of Croxton and Kilverstone, on those of the Hundreds of Grimshoe and
Shropham and the South-West and Mid Parliamentary Divisions of Norfolk.
In virtue of that last distinction the occupier had a vote in both
divisions, and was a man greatly cherished and cultivated by parties
when election-time drew nigh.
[Illustration: “BRIDGEHAM HIGH TREE.”]
In another two miles, nearing the fourth mile from Thetford, there
stands, prominent by reason of its height and isolation on Roudham
Heath, the tall black poplar known as “Bridgeham High Tree.” The village
of Bridgeham lies far away to the right, and nothing comes in view to
distract the attention from this landmark. For a landmark it is,
planted, according to the received local traditions, by the packmen who
fared this lonely road in days before railways, and often lost their way
on these heaths in the trackless snows of winter, when every road in
these wind-swept uplands disappeared and lay buried in that white
winding-sheet. The High Tree is of noble proportions, and placed at the
crest of an incline slightly raised above the general level of the
heath. A number of scattered thorn-trees grow near.
A little distance beyond it, a scarcely noticeable track crossing the
road and leading on the left hand athwart Wretham Heath to a level
crossing, stands for that disused prehistoric road, the Peddar’s Way. A
woman who unlocks the gates for the passing stranger dimly remembers to
have heard it spoken of as the “Pedlar’s Way.”
From here the rough and stumbly track leads for half a mile to the crest
of the ridge, where a deep hole, known as the “Thieves’ Pit,” is the
subject of a legend telling how, at some period unspecified, Illington
Hall was plundered by a mounted gang who hid their booty here. Looking
backwards from this commanding view-point, this is seen to be the most
solitary of all the many heaths surrounding Thetford, and that despite
the railway running through, with Roudham Junction in its midst. The
usual picture of a junction is of a busy station, with bustling porters
and crowds of passengers, but that of Roudham is a very different place.
You will not find it in the railway guides, because, in fact, tickets
are not issued to or from it, and it is a little difficult to understand
the existence of a station, as well as the actual junction of lines, in
the heathland, off the road and away from sight of houses. But there it
stands, and its signal-posts and station buildings are the only alien
features of this hoary heath, where the relics of prehistoric man are
found, where the curlews whistle down the wind, and that coastwise
branch of the plover family, the ring-plovers, breed.
For Wretham Heath is one of the seven heaths in the neighbourhood, and
in the only district of England, where the ring-plovers visit inland.
They come here in spring, and are doubtless in sympathy with the place.
In common with them, the black-headed gull loves the heath, and students
of natural history tell us its sands, plants, beetles, and
butterflies—and, in fact, the whole of its flora and fauna—are those of
the coast. Away beyond that lonely junction is Ringmere, the identical
“Hringmar” of the Heimskringla-saga, where the Battle of Ringmere, the
last of those many bloodthirsty fights between Saxon and Dane, was
fought, in 1010. Ringmere is a singular, nay mystic, pool, sometimes
measuring seven acres, at others reduced to a puddle, and again in full
flood and stocked with fish. It is now again absolutely dry. Other
curious meres of this immediate district, with similarly strange
vicissitudes, are those of Langmere, Fowlmere, and the “Devil’s
Punchbowl,” a smaller but deeper lake, whose white evening coronal of
mist the fearful folklore of the rural folk has styled the “Devil’s
Nightcap.”
There were yet others before Wretham West Mere, and Great Mere were
drained, in 1851 and 1856.
The Padder’s, or Peddar’s Way, here plunges through a long avenue of
pines, on its way to Watton. It is a solitary, and at times even an
eerie place, for great livid fungi grow in its shade and curious tall
toadstool things, shaped like half-furled Japanese umbrellas, dot the
grass; while fairy rings are there for the beguilement of mortal man
rash enough to stand within any one of their magic circles what time the
clock strikes the hour of midnight. Then—well, then I don’t know what
might happen, and really am not courageous enough to make the essay.
Whether the little folk merely fool you with fairy gold that, when the
illusory moonshine kingdom of Queen Mab is replaced by matter-of-fact
sunshine, turns to the sere and sorry leaves of autumn past; whether
they addle your brains, or give you a tricksy wisdom that is not of this
world, I do not know; but if the fairy rings were only potent enough to
recall the past, bid yesterday return, make unsaid the lamentable word,
undo the irrevocable deed—why then, who would not brave the mystic hour,
and chance what might hap? Ah! then, what a place of resort this would
be, and what crowds of clients the fairies would have! But if all these
things were possible, they would still be beyond our reach, for I am
quite sure the company-promoters would get an option on the fairies and
float them as a company, under the style of “Oblivion, Ltd.” Puck would,
of course, join the board after allotment. No one under the financial
status of a multi-millionaire would be able to purchase the fairy boons
vended under these auspices, for such people have much they would only
too dearly like revoked, and would outbid all others.
[Illustration: THE “SCUTES,” PEDDAR’S WAY.]
XXXIX
HERE the murmurous twilight course of the Peddar’s Way through the
avenue of pine-trees known as Dale Row marks the boundaries of the
parishes of Roudham and East Wretham. By the elder among the peasantry
it is still spoken of as “the Scutes”—_i.e._, the Skirts; but it is
quite certain they are ignorant why they so call it. It is interesting
to recall the fact that feminine skirts are pronounced “skutes” in New
York and other towns of the New England States of America, doubtless in
a survival of the old East Anglian speech taken overseas in the early
settlement of the North American colonies.