E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Josephine Paolucci, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)

      See 38938-h.htm or 38938-h.zip:
      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38938/38938-h/38938-h.htm)
      or
      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38938/38938-h.zip)

[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

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 viâ 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.

     _Détour_ 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, viâ Darsham to Blythburgh,
     3-3/4.

     _Détour_ 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.

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, viâ 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 viâ 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.), viâ 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.

     _Détour_ suggested to East Bergholt, viâ Dedham, 5;
     back to Manningtree, 5. Manningtree to Harwich (R. A.),
     viâ Mistley, Bradfield, and Dovercourt (R.), 11-1/2.
     Harwich to Colchester, viâ 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) viâ Bures St. Mary, Marsh, and
     Great Cornard, 10. (2) viâ 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, viâ
     Cavendish and Clare to Stoke-by-Clare, 8.
     Stoke-by-Clare, viâ Ridgewell, Tilbury-juxta-Clare, to
     Great Yeldham, 4. Great Yeldham to Halstead (P.), viâ
     Castle Hedingham and Little Maplestead, 7. _Détour_ of
     3-1/2 out and 3-1/2 back advised to Little Maplestead.
     Halstead to Colchester, viâ 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, viâ
     Heybridge, to Tiptree, 7. Tiptree, viâ 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) Viâ Bishop's Stortford (10-1/4) to Marble Arch
     (43), viâ Sawbridgeworth, Harlow, Epping, Loughton, and
     Woodford Green.

     (2) Viâ 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, viâ 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 viâ
     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 viâ 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?--_Quære_ 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, archæological, 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
mediæval 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.

CHAPTER II

WINTER. IPSWICH TO NORWICH VIÂ WOODBRIDGE, BECCLES, LOWESTOFT, AND YARMOUTH

     A walk in Ipswich--Sparrowe's House--With Pickwick and
     the Wellers--Start at noon--The glittering car--Another
     passenger--Infantine pilotage--A loose
     clutch--Mechanic's chagrin--A stitch in time--Nuts
     screwed home--Need to watch
     mechanics--Woodbridge--Edward Fitzgerald--Wickham
     Market and Saxmundham--Abyssinian luncheon--Détour to
     Aldeburgh--Aldeburgh described--The dilatory
     Alde--Birthplace of George Crabbe--His views of
     Aldeburgh--Saxmundham to Yoxford--Peasenhall
     adjacent--Yoxford to Blythburgh--A motorist's
     church--Détour to Southwold--Southwold
     described--Battle of Sole Bay--Did Isaac Newton hear
     guns at Cambridge?--Lord Ossory's ride from
     Euston--Blythburgh to Beccles--First view
     disappointing--Better next time--Unforeseen value of
     Connemara cloak--Beccles to Lowestoft--_Norfolk and
     Norwich Notes and Queries_--Their value--Origin of
     Lowestoft harbour--"Norwich a port"--Cubitt and
     Telford--Sir Samuel Peto--Meaning of
     "Lowestoft"--Lowestoft to Yarmouth--Direct route to
     Norwich--Darkness and frozen haze--Straining
     eyes--Norwich at last--The "Royal" formerly "Angel"--An
     ancient hostelry--Colossal window tax--Norfolk election
     memories--Corn Law riot--"Coke of Norfolk"
     sheltered--Always a Whig house--Stroll in
     Norwich--Multitude of churches--The walls and "murage"
     tax--A learned society's day--Fraction of Norwich only
     seen--Wat Tyler's Rebellion--Geoffrey Lister and Sir
     Robert Salle--St. Peter's Permountergate--Memories of
     Nelson--Fascination of Norwich--Its great men and
     women--George Borrow--"Old Crome"--The Norwich school.

Truth to tell, Ipswich on the Gipping, which becomes the Orwell and an
estuary lower down, seemed to me then an ancient city showing, except in a
few picturesque houses and the gateway of Wolsey's College, few signs of
antiquity. If it cannot be called happy in having had no history, for it
was plundered by the Danes in 991, it has had little cause for unhappiness
of that kind since the Conquest; it has produced no really famous man
except Wolsey, though Gainsborough lived in it for some years; and its
churches, although not quite devoid of interest, are not striking enough
to delay a motorist. Note, in passing, not the least advantage of an
exploring tour by motor. You need neither spend time in examining that
which is barely worth the process on the ground that there is nothing else
to be done, nor hurry away from that which is interesting, in order to
catch a train; but, staying so long as seems pleasant and no longer, you
may be transported when you please, rapidly and pleasantly, to scenes you
have reason to believe to be worthy of your regard.

In these circumstances, after an admiring glance at the famous Sparrowe's
House in the Butter Market, close to the hotel, I frankly betook myself to
an effort to follow the Wellers, father and son, Mr. Pickwick and his
followers, through an eventful day. This stable-yard round the corner to
the left, where the Panhard was now being furbished up, was the same on
which Mr. Weller, senior, looked when, "in a small room in the vicinity,"
he discussed a pot of ale and the "gammoning" of Sam, and drank to the
toast, "May you soon vipe off the disgrace as you've inflicted on the
family name." The office in the courtyard was doubtless that at which he
got his "vaybill." Walking about these very streets Sam wormed himself into
the confidence of the lachrymose Job Trotter. In this inn parlour Mr. Peter
Magnus, _alias_ Jingle, splendidly attired, made a hollow pretence of
breakfasting with Mr. Pickwick; here the latter gave his simple hints on
courtship and proposal, and here were seen "the joyous face of Mr. Tupman,
the serene countenance of Mr. Winkle, and the intellectual lineaments of
Mr. Snodgrass." In this room was enacted that memorable scene when Mr.
Magnus presented Miss Witherfield to Mr. Pickwick and Miss Witherfield
screamed, but neither she nor Mr. Pickwick was indelicate enough to mention
the cause--his unwitting invasion of her chamber overnight. Rushing out of
this room the lady, after bolting herself into her bedroom, went forth in
search of Mr. Nupkins and apprised him of the forthcoming duel, which there
was not really much reason to anticipate. Where exactly Miss Witherfield
saw Mr. Nupkins I am unhappily not able to say, nor yet, and for the same
reason, whither Grummer, with his myrmidon Dubbley and his "division," each
with a short truncheon and a brass crown, conducted Mr. Pickwick and Mr.
Tupman in the old sedan-chair; but for all that it is easy to picture the
whole of the never-to-be-forgotten scene, all the more memorable in that it
never was enacted. In fact, it is no mean regret to me that, on that cold
January morning, I was not able to find "the house with the green gate,"
with the "house-door guarded on either side by an American aloe in a tub."
It has eluded me since also. Perhaps it is gone, like a good deal of old
Ipswich; possibly some miscreant has had his gate painted white instead of
green; perhaps I looked in the wrong place, in the vicinity of St.
Clement's Church. It is even within the bounds of possibility that the
house with the green gate never had any more real and substantial existence
than Mr. Pickwick himself. All I know is that I could not find it.

At noon or thereabouts--time does not worry one in a motor-car, unless one
is seeking records--we boarded the Panhard, now "bright as a Birmingham
button," and started off up a long and trying hill, in cold, dry, and
windless weather, for a circuitous drive, its sinuosities determined by the
desires of my friend. A new member was added to the party in the person of
a resident at Norwich, desirous of reaching that ancient city in due
course, who was supposed to know, and probably did know, every considerable
turning of every high road in the two counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. He
had not, however, enjoyed much experience as the pilot of an automobile,
and he found, as I had in years gone by when I was new to the pastime, that
eye and memory were not equal to moving together at a speed proportioned to
that of the car. "Which road?" the charioteer would cry--the new passenger
was riding astern--when we were from fifty to seventy yards from a fork or
a turn, and hesitation would often be visible in the reply, so that it was
necessary to slow down and sometimes, having invaded the wrong road, to
back out again. This is not criticism, it is rather matter of observation
and experience. Only recently have the minds of driving and driven men been
called upon to exercise their judgment, to choose a line, as a fox-hunter
might say, while they are being carried through space much more rapidly
than of yore, and the pace puzzles them at first. You are past a familiar
turning in a car in less time than is consumed over approaching it in a
dog-cart or on horseback, and the aspect of the turning itself has
something strange about it; but you grow accustomed to the new conditions
with experience. In fact, motor-cars sharpen the perceptions and spur the
intelligence. To venture an audacious travesty, and some even more hardy
doggerel:--

    _... Urgendi didicisse fideliter artem
    Exacuit mentem, nee sinit esse pigram._

    He who has learned a car to drive
    Sharpens his wits and looks alive.

Personally, I sat alongside the driver, a place of honour, if cold, and the
mechanic sat at my feet. Pity is wasted on a mechanic so placed at any
time, for he likes the position, and it is not so comfortless as it looks
by a long way, _experto crede_. In any case our ex-soldier was a proud man
that morning, for his car was a joy to the eye. The day before owner and
mechanic were hustings-worn, the car looked battered and dissipated as well
as fog-dimmed. Now the brass shone with a glow that would have satisfied
the proud commander of a man-of-war, who is the most exacting person
living. If that mechanic had read the Greek tragedians he would have known
that Nemesis must needs come soon. Brass glittered, varnish shone, all four
cylinders worked nobly, but the engine would race from time to time. It
became all too clear to him who had the control of the machine, or desired
to have it, that he had it not in entirety, since the clutch kept slipping.
Hence came power wasted, miles per hour lost, and a definite feeling of
discontent in the owner. So, after a hill or two had been climbed without
satisfaction, a halt was called on the level. The mechanic did not like it
a bit, and he had our sympathy. He had worked hard; he had turned out the
car with a creditable appearance; it was crushing to be found out in a
single fault. I knew his feelings from experience. To be blamed when you
thoroughly deserve it is tolerable; to be blamed for no fault at all is to
find consolation in private reflection upon the folly of him, or her, who
administers reproof; to discover that one essential point has been
forgotten when you have tried hard to remember everything is to be
compelled to recognize that, after every willing effort, you only look a
fool after all. The mechanic had our sympathy on another ground too. He
vowed, of course, that the clutch could not be made tighter; he declared
that, if it were, the consequences would be disastrous; for you shall note
that your mechanic dearly loves "a bit o' play" in fittings, and abhors a
nut screwed quite home. All these things were clear to us, but we were none
the less inexorable. As, in starting on a heavy job in carpenter's work,
minutes spent in putting a keen edge on to plane and chisel are hours saved
in the end, so it is sheer idiocy to muddle on with a motor-car if, at the
beginning of the journey, you are aware of something wrong that is capable
of being set right on the road. It is, indeed, in detecting the first
premonitory evidence of trouble, and in meeting difficulties more than
half-way, that the genius of an inspired driver is shown. This little
weakness of mechanics for a "bit o' play" is also worth remembering.

So we were sorry for the mechanic, but the thing had got to be done whether
he liked or no, and for half an hour he lay on his back under the car,
straining, grunting, otherwise eloquently silent, while black and viscous
oil made a little pool on the road alongside of his honest head, and while
we, pacing up and down the frozen road, forbore even to remind him that, if
the road had been muddy, his fate would have been worse. In cases where an
angel would lose his temper under the gentlest persiflage it is only decent
to leave a willing but disappointed man to himself. The half-hour ended;
the job was done; overdone a little, as the mechanic well knew, yet not so
much overdone but that a driver of rare skill could disappoint him by
ignoring the inconvenience; and we took our seats again. The car sprang
forward like a living creature, moving fast and smoothly. There was all the
difference in the world between the motion as it was and the motion as it
had been, and the chagrin of the mechanic yielded to time and to the proud
feeling that all was right with "his car" through his handiwork.

Sooth to say, the scenery was not interesting on a frosty and somewhat
misty day. The route was, to start with, viâ Woodbridge, Wickham Market,
and Stratford St. Andrew to Saxmundham; that is to say, the road runs
along the brow, the very much wrinkled brow, of the upland, which is high
by comparison with the lowland, extending a long way in from the coast,
running from Felixstowe to Aldeburgh and beyond. Of that lowland we could
see nothing. Woodbridge, appearing to consist of one street, long,
straggling, and narrow, was the first village of any consideration through
which we passed. Its chief claim to fame is that Edward Fitzgerald wrote
letters at it, remarking in one, dated 1855, that Woodbridge had not
reached 1842 yet. But we shall see Woodbridge again. Next came Wickham
Market, narrow, straggling, and long. It is quite commonplace. From Wickham
Market we went on to Saxmundham, and there committed a grave error. "Hot
dinner," it was stated, was due in three-quarters of an hour, but it could
be hurried forward if we wished. We wished accordingly, and wished
afterwards that we had not, for the meat, some forgotten joint half-boiled,
was in a state in which, according to the traveller Bruce, the Abyssinians
eat their meat from choice; and the accompanying parsnips, quite hard, may
have been fit to place before sheep. As we were neither Abyssinians nor
sheep, but English travellers, the error was felt the more acutely because
we had ourselves only to blame. Given the same conditions another time, I
should urge a detour to Aldeburgh, a detour of some six miles to be begun
about two miles short of Saxmundham, for Aldeburgh is worth seeing and man
can feed there.

[Illustration: WOODBRIDGE-STREET]

Of Aldeburgh an observation or two may be made on the basis of a sojourn a
few years since. It is certainly one of the most bracing places in this
world. It has a tolerable hotel, good golf-links, and a fine view of the
sea; and the ancient moot-house is picturesque. The abiding impression left
by Aldeburgh is simply that it is the oddest place ever seen. The little
River Alde, starting somewhere near Saxmundham, follows a more or less
southerly course for a couple of miles; then an even smaller river joins
it, and, flowing eastward for a mile or so, the combined streams seem to be
heading for the sea, distant about six miles; but it takes them fifteen
miles, even with the help of another so-called river, purposeless as
themselves, to reach the sea; for first they are lost in a mecranking mere
of sluggish water, which actually approaches within a hundred yards of the
sea at Aldeburgh, where it is stopped by a stony bank. The mere continues,
and the rivers are merged in it, parallel to high-water mark, divided from
it sometimes by a hundred yards or so, sometimes by half a mile, for nine
miles from the point of turning, and soon the water is dubbed River Ore in
the map. By this time it is meandering, mainly under the influence of the
tide most likely, behind and to the west of Orford Ness, and it is not
until somewhere about the middle of Hollesley Bay that this utter absurdity
of a river, this monstrous estuary for three trifling streams, finds its
way into the sea.

A year or two ago the good folks of Aldeburgh celebrated their native poet,
George Crabbe, though why they chose the date, seeing that Crabbe was born
in 1754 and died in 1832, it is not quite easy to see. The celebration,
indeed, was, like the use made of Pickwick by the hotel at Ipswich, an
example of the truth that a community or an individual having a mind for
advertisement will not be stopped by petty considerations of pride. George
Crabbe was born at Aldeburgh, through no fault of his own. He left it in
1768, to be apprenticed to a surgeon at Bury St. Edmunds. He came back to
it to practise as a surgeon, and failed miserably as a medical man,
because his mind was on the making of verses all the time. Then he tried
his fortune in London and beat despairingly on the doors of fame until
Burke introduced him to Dodsley, who brought out _The Library_ with some
success in 1781. At about the same time Dr. Johnson expressed a high
opinion of his verse. Next he was ordained and took up his residence as
curate at Aldeburgh, but he left it soon to become domestic chaplain to the
Duke of Rutland; and he does not seem to have had much, if anything, to do
with his native place during his subsequent career as prosperous poet and
comfortable clergyman. He was a distinctly sound poet, with a queer vein of
humour, although his admirer, Edward Fitzgerald, whom we meet to-day,
valued him perhaps too highly, and Byron, probably for his own purposes,
overpraised him in the words:--

    Nature's sternest painter, but her best.

Crabbe hated Aldeburgh, or Aldeburgh scenery at any rate; or, if he did not
hate them, he took the stern view of them.

    Lo! where the heath, with withering brake grown o'er,
    Lends the light turf that warms the neighbouring poor;
    From thence a length of burning sand appears,
    Where the thin harvest waves its withered ears;
    Rank weeds, that every art and care defy,
    Reign o'er the land and rob the blighted rye.

Thus does he describe the vicinity and thus the so-called river and its
marge:--

    Here samphire banks and saltworth bind the flood,
    And stakes and seaweed withering in the mud;
    And higher up a ridge of all things base,
    Which some strong tide has rolled upon the place.

No, assuredly Crabbe had no liking for Aldeburgh, and to be perfectly
candid, I agree with him that, save for golfers, it is a dreary and
eye-afflicting place. In this view I confess to have believed myself to be
singular and, for expressing it, have incurred scorn more than once. So
Crabbe is quoted in confirmation, yet with the hope that those who visit
Aldeburgh may agree with the general view and not with that of a minority
of two, one of them something better than a minor poet. Be it added, in
justice to Aldeburgh, that you can look for amber among the pebbles on the
beach. So you can anywhere and find as much as I did.

From Saxmundham we laid a course due north for Yoxford--Peasenhall of
murderous fame lies some three miles to the west--and passed by way of
Darsham to Blythburgh. Here, in a village named in _Domesday_, is a really
striking fifteenth-century church, in good Perpendicular and with splendid
clerestory, plainly visible from the road; and we are not far from
Southwold, now known of many as a summer resort, whereas in days not long
past it was visited by few persons save those who knew of the existence of
St. Edmund's Church with its really majestic tower and rare rood-loft.
Here, by the way, is buried Agnes Strickland, the historian. The very
slight inward curve of the coastline here is dignified with the name of a
bay, and as Sole Bay, which is simply Southwold Bay spoken short, it has a
considerable place in history. On 28 May, 1672, "the combined fleets lay at
Sole Bay in a very negligent posture." They were the fleets of England,
under the command of the Duke of York, with Lord Sandwich under him, and of
France; and here De Ruyter, the greatest sea-captain of his age, took his
royal adversary quite by surprise. This was due not so much to the dashing
merit of De Ruyter as to the crass carelessness of the Duke, for "Sandwich,
being an experienced officer, had given the Duke warning of the danger; but
received, they said, such an answer as intimated that there was more of
caution than of courage in his apprehensions." What hasty words, I wonder,
of the rude and haughty admiral were represented by this sonorous
periphrasis? De Ruyter came, with ninety-one ships of war and forty-four
fireships, sailing "in quest of the English," and Sandwich, after giving
the warning in vain, saved the day by a display of gallantry to be ranked
as extraordinary even in the annals of the English navy. Sailing out to
meet the Dutchman, he engaged him at once and gave time to the Duke and the
French admiral. "He killed Van Ghent, a Dutch admiral, and beat off his
ship; he sunk another ship, which ventured to lay him aboard; he sunk three
fireships, which endeavoured to grapple with him; and, though his vessel
was torn to pieces with shot, and of a thousand men she contained near six
hundred were laid dead upon the deck, he continued still to thunder with
all his artillery in the midst of the enemy. But another fireship, more
fortunate than the preceding, having laid hold of his vessel, her
destruction was now inevitable. Warned by Sir Edward Haddock, his captain,
he refused to make his escape, and bravely embraced death as a shelter from
that ignominy which a rash expression of the Duke's, he thought, had thrown
upon him." Admiral and flag-captain, in fact, perished when the fire
reached the magazine, and this time at any rate the "price of Admiralty"
was paid in full.

[Illustration: SOUTHWOLD HARBOUR]

The English claimed a victory and embalmed it in a ballad, although the
truth was that the Duke's fleet was too much shattered for pursuit and the
French fleet, under secret orders, perhaps, from Louis XIV, did next to
nothing; the Dutch, probably, claimed one also, although the battle ended
the hopes with which De Ruyter's expedition started. All that matters
nothing now. The moment that heartens a man is that at which he stands on
this low-lying shore, as spectators stood all the long day in May, 1672,
and remembers the gallant fight and the glorious death of Sandwich. "Sir
Isaac Newton is also said to have heard it [the firing] at Cambridge." So
writes the accomplished author of Murray's Guide in 1875, and there is
nothing incredible in the suggestion. The distance is but seventy miles,
roughly; the cannon of old time with their black powder made a terrible
sound; acoustics are full of mystery, and the noise of the big guns at
Portsmouth is often heard in the heart of the Berkshire Downs. From Euston
to the centre of Sole Bay is about half the distance over which sound is
said to have reached Newton, and it is on record that Lord Ossory, then a
guest of the Duke of Grafton, heard the guns and rode half-way across East
Anglia to witness the battle. Surely it was a majestic and awe-inspiring
spectacle for those on the shore, and surely it is worth while to
reconstruct it now in imagination.

From Blythburgh we went along a road of poor surface, and of no scenic
attraction in winter save that the trees were fine, to Beccles, one of the
three principal towns of Suffolk, possessed, I was content to believe, of a
grand church, and boasting a view over the marshes of the Waveney, once
navigable. But we saw little of Beccles, the name of which reminded Edward
Fitzgerald of "hooks and eyes"; we were indeed quite glad to leave it after
penetrating a quarter suggestive of a new and prosperous Midland town, for
election fever was running high, and car and its occupants were cheered or
hooted by eager crowds; cheered most, perhaps, for the crowds were mostly
"Red," and the Connemara cloak seemed to express a sympathy which, in
truth, was not felt. We had all had enough electioneering and to spare and
were glad to turn our faces for Lowestoft. As will be seen later, Beccles
made a far more pleasant impression on a subsequent visit. At Lowestoft
too--it is a short and easy run--election fever was running high, and the
political excitement of a seething mob does not make for an individual
appreciation of the picturesque. But old Lowestoft is picturesque, hanging,
as it were, over the sea, and South Lowestoft has a peculiar origin worth
knowing.

Among the pleasant enterprises incident to the writing of this book has
been the making of notes from _Norfolk and Norwich Notes and Queries_,
reprinted from the _Norfolk Chronicle_, to which I have added in my
note-book _O si sic omnes!_ Would indeed that all county papers laid
themselves out, as this one does, to collect notes from those interested in
the antiquities of their county. Here as to Lowestoft are found two notes,
one entertaining and suggestive, the other distinctly taking. It appears
that in 1558 one Thomas North published a fantastic explanation of the
origin of herring curing, in which Lowestoft has always rivalled Yarmouth.
Without giving it in detail, it may be stated that in essential spirit, if
on a different topic, it exactly anticipates Charles Lamb's divine theory
of roast pig; but Thomas North has none of that grace of expression which
compels quotation when one encounters Lamb, and one only regrets that Lamb
did not think of describing the origin of herring curing as well as of
roast pork.

The second Lowestoft note deserves a paragraph to itself, for it is full of
moral lessons, and a curious illustration of the way in which the
overweening ambition of one community and the churlishness of a second has
ended in loss to the first and in the profit of a third community to the
prejudice of the second. In the records of St. Peter's Church, at Norwich
(St. Peter's, Permountergate, if memory serves accurately, which is St.
Peter's, Parmentersgate, or Tailors' Street), is an entry of 27 March,
1814: "Ringing the Bells for Norwich a Port. 10/6." Early in the last
century, it appears, Norwich was a very important centre of the wool trade.
Now Norwich thrives on mustard and boots, but let that pass; at the time in
question wool was the staple trade, and it was exported by way of Yarmouth.
In 1812 or thereabouts, like Manchester later, Norwich determined, if
possible, to have direct communication with the sea. Enterprising men
consulted William Cubitt, afterwards Sir William Cubitt, and a very
distinguished engineer in matters relating to canals and docks. They
probably consulted him mainly because he was a Norfolk man, for he was not
yet thirty years old, and his fame, which was to be considerable, was yet
to come. They sought the advice also of that consummate Scottish engineer,
Thomas Telford, then well advanced in middle age and almost at the pinnacle
of his fame. Alternative routes for the proposed canal were suggested, one
by way of Yarmouth, the other by way of Lowestoft. Yarmouth, its safe trade
threatened, opposed from the beginning, and eventually the Lowestoft route
was adopted; the mouth of Lowestoft Harbour was cleared from the sands that
blocked it, a cut was made connecting it with the Waveney through Oulton
Broad, another cut from Haddiscoe to Reedham, and in 1814 the bells rang
gaily to celebrate "Norwich a port." For Norwich it was a short-lived
triumph, since the scheme did not pay its way, and in 1844 it was
practically, possibly indeed formally, bankrupt. At any rate, the Lowestoft
part of the works was bought outright by Sir Samuel Peto, who in that
year--but whether before he acquired the harbour or not I cannot
say--bought Somerleyton hard by, some time the seat of the Fitz-Osberts and
the Jernigans, from Lord Sidney Godolphin Osborne. _Sic vos, non vobis._
The Norwich folk lost their money, or some of it; Sir Samuel Peto took
Lowestoft in hand, "developed" it, as the saying goes, so that South
Lowestoft became a flourishing seaside place; and finally Lowestoft as a
port became a serious rival to Yarmouth. As a seaside place Lowestoft is
pleasing to some tastes now, even as it was in the days when Edward
Fitzgerald would betake himself thither from Woodbridge to spend his days
in sailing and in writing letters which are a treasure to posterity; and
his evenings in reading Shakespeare or _Don Quixote_ with his close
friends, Cowell and Aldis Wright, who often lodged at Lowestoft for a short
time in summer. It would have been good to have their opinion upon the
derivation of Lowestoft, appearing in _Domesday_ as Lothu-wis-toft, which
is said to be "the enclosure by the water of Loth," who in his turn is said
to have been a Norse invader; but nothing is to be discovered of Loth, or
Loo, save that Lake Lothing, now the inner harbour, is named after him, as
was the hundred of Lothingland or Ludingaland; and Edward Fitzgerald is
really much more interesting than a nebulous Norse pirate.

[Illustration: FISHING BOATS AT LOWESTOFT]

Election fever and its ravings, a short glance at picturesque features, and
the inestimable blessings of tea and warmth are the principal memories left
by this particular visit to Lowestoft. Thence we ran along the easy coast
road in the darkness to Great Yarmouth, which, on this occasion, left no
vivid impression on the memory. No such language, however, can be employed
with regard to the remainder of that evening's drive. Doubts had arisen
whether it would be wiser to make for Norwich by the more circuitous route
which fetches a compass round Caister Castle, or by the "new road" running
in a direct line for Acle first, across a salt marsh, and from Acle fairly
straight for Norwich. The new road was much the shorter and, being across a
salt marsh, a dead-level, but our local pilot was doubtful as to the state
of its surface. However, it was decided to make inquiry at the toll-gate, a
mile or so out of Yarmouth, and to abide by the answer, which was
satisfactory. So was the road, so far as its surface went. It ran first for
five miles straight as an arrow; the straightness was apparent at the time,
but the five miles seemed like twenty. A fine mist was frozen over the
watery land, nothing was visible on one side except, at stated intervals, a
towering telegraph pole, and on both sides, at shorter intervals, were puny
and poor trees which may have been poplars or willows. It became my duty,
seated beside the man at the wheel, to peer into the darkness, trying to
distinguish any possible obstacle or turn, to make out the character of any
light that might be seen, and to watch for the bend, which, after another
straight run of some three miles, would take us to Acle. As a rule I could
just see the outline of one telegraph post as we passed its predecessor;
there was, in all probability, a deep dyke on either side, and it was an
ideal night for running into a country vehicle travelling without a tail
light; but happily we encountered none. Indeed, although motorists complain
much, late years have seen a great improvement in this respect. Of lights
on approaching vehicles we saw one or two, appearing at first to be distant
and stationary as a planet on a clear night, and then to be close to us in
an instant. It was, in short, a trying experience to the nerves and to the
eyes, and we resolved to avoid night journeys as much as might be in the
future. The resolution was renewed when we looked at our strained and
bloodshot eyes the next morning, and broken perforce the next evening; but
night travelling by motor-car in winter is not to be recommended unless the
moon is strong. It is a process to be resolved upon when circumstances
suit, not to be planned in advance.

From Acle to Norwich was ten miles more or less of up-and-down travelling,
the hills not serious enough to try a good motor high, and it was an
unfeigned relief to reach the shelter and food of the Royal Hotel. Here,
practically, ends the account of the second day of this excursion, for the
Royal Hotel is comfortable, not expensive as English hotels go, and new;
but mere comfort is fortunately commonplace, its novelty is rather more of
an outrage than usual in this case, and the novelty of the hotel's name is
an offence not to be pardoned. Here, where the modern "Royal" stands, in
the very centre of the city, stood the famous "Angel" from the fifteenth
century at least to the middle of the nineteenth. Local antiquaries, many
and eager, rejoice in tracing the history of this celebrated hostelry,
finding frequent allusions to it in the records of the Master of the
Revels, for here mountebanks performed, and theatrical performances were
given, and strange monsters were shown. It had the glory of paying £115 tax
for thirty windows in the eighteenth century--this makes one understand the
blocked windows in old houses more sympathetically than a bare mention of
window tax does--and it was the great Whig House in the days when Norfolk
elections were, as Mr. Walter Rye tells us, half of the history of Norfolk,
the other half being concerned with trade. It is true that Mr. Walter Rye,
speaking of the election of 1675, says that Sir Nevill Cattyn's party
"used the 'Royal,' (then the 'King's Head,') and the other side, using a
stratagem--singularly enough repeated at the same house last election, two
or three years ago--ordered a great dinner there on the pretence that they
might 'friendly meet and dine' with the other party, and ultimately secured
the whole house as their election quarters; Cattyn, who was brought into
town by four thousand horsemen, having to put up with the 'White Swan' 'at
the back side of the butchers' shambles'" (_A History of Norfolk_, by
Walter Rye. Elliot Stock, 1885). I prefer to pin my faith to _Norfolk and
Norwich Notes and Queries_, not only because its elaborate article on the
topic is evidently based on careful research, but also because its
statements are not contradicted in subsequent issues, and these bear
eloquent testimony to the fact that the local antiquaries of East Anglia
have at least one trait in common with the antiquaries of the wider
world--they contradict with freedom and dispute with endless pertinacity.
Here there is no contradiction (and Mr. Rye's accuracy is by no means equal
to his industry or to his love of antiquity), so it may be taken as
reasonably certain that the "Royal" is on the site of the "Angel," and that
the "Angel" first appeared by that name in 1578, when it was leased to one
Peterson; but the property has been traced back to Mistress Katharine Dysse
in the rolls of the Mayoralty Court of Norwich, and she lived early in the
fifteenth century. Here, in October, 1677, Joseph Argent had "fourteen days
allowed to him to make show of such tricks as are mentioned in his patent
at the 'Angel.'" In 1683 "Robert Austine at ye Angel hath leave given him
for a week from ys Daie to make show of the storie of Edward the 4th and
Iane Shore, and noe longer." In several later years Peter Dolman clearly
made a great success with Punchinello or Puntionella--both forms are used.
There are a score of similar entries, also of displays at the "Angel," of
freaks and monstrosities, waxworks and the like. Hither fled Mr. Thomas
Coke, of Holkham, father of the agriculture of Norfolk, during a Corn Law
riot of 1815, escaping through the back of the house with the then Earl of
Albemarle; in the "Angel" in 1794 the Duke of York stayed when on his way
to Yarmouth to meet the exiled family of the Prince of Orange, and here the
Duke of Wellington changed horses on his way to Gunton in 1820, receiving a
hearty welcome from the citizens. From the "Angel" the Whigs sallied forth
during the election of 1832, and enjoyed a glorious fight in quite the old
style with the Tories in the market-place. An inn-name of such antiquity
and so many associations should not have been changed. Apparently, however,
the house has not changed its political colour, for it is a curious
coincidence that, on the evening of 24 January, Lord Kimberley was a guest
at the "Royal," and next day his son, Lord Wodehouse, won the Mid-Norfolk
election. Now the Wodehouses have been Whigs ever since Whigs were, and it
need not be doubted that Sir Philip Wodehouse, M.P. for Castle Rising, who
died in 1623, was of much the same political temper as those of the name
who came after him.

Next morning I walked about Norwich, and I have done the like many times,
but, short of writing a book on the subject, which is certainly not
necessary, it is by no means easy to decide how to treat it. Norfolk has
more parishes and churches in proportion to its area than any other county
(730 to 2024 square miles, whereas Yorkshire to 5836 square miles has but
613, according to Mr. Rye), and of these, besides a remarkably striking
cathedral, there are no less than thirty-five in Norwich alone. Norwich
has a castle, its history and nature far from free of doubt; some relics of
walls built by the citizens for their own safety in the time of Edward I,
when they were empowered to levy a "murage" tax; an ancient Guildhall of
smooth, black flint (which interested me, although it is said to have "no
regularity or beauty of architecture to recommend it"); St. Andrew's Hall;
the nave of an ancient Dominican church; a school partially domiciled in
what is left of a Dominican convent; a fine museum containing some rare
treasures of antiquity; the curious part known as Tombland; and great store
of ancient houses, each one of them possessed of a history. Also, in the
"Maid's Head," to be described later, it has the most alluring old inn
known to me anywhere. True it is that a mayor of Norwich, conducting a
royal personage on a tour of inspection, is reported to have said "this was
an ancient city, Your Royal Highness, before several of the old houses were
pulled down," but, while there can never be too many old houses left to be
an endless delight to the antiquary, there are far too many to be noticed
in a work of this kind. One learns without surprise, but not without
satisfaction, that a society of persons interested in antiquities meets
periodically for "Walks in Norwich," and it is pleasant to follow their
wanderings. Now they are studying the stately cathedral, with its three
magnificent gateways, and its beautiful fourteenth-century spire, and
listening to its story from the lips, it may be, of Dr. Jessopp. (All I
need say at this moment is that I have never known the grand simplicity of
the prevailing Norman style to strike the imagination so quickly and so
completely as when I first entered it at a time, as it happened, when the
exceptionally perfect organ was being played in the empty church.) At
another time they are investigating the Butter Hills, and learning that
they take their name from John le Boteler, who gave them to Carrow Abbey;
at another finding traces in a malt-house of the house of that stout Sir
Robert de Salle who opposed Wat Tyler's rebellion in these parts, and was
celebrated by Froissart. Here the temptation to quote a little is
overpowering. The insurgents, it should be said, were led by Sir Roger
Bacon and Geoffrey Lister, a dyer.

"The reason that they stopped near Norwich was that the Governor of the
town was a knight called Sir Robert Salle: he was not a gentleman by birth,
but having acquired great renown for his ability and courage King Edward
had created him a knight: he was the handsomest and strongest man in
England. Lister and his companions took it into their heads they would make
this knight their commander and carry him with them in order to be the more
feared. They sent orders to him to come out into the fields to speak with
them, or they would attack and burn the city. The knight, considering that
it was much better for him to go to them than that they should commit such
outrages, mounted his horse and went out of the town alone to hear what
they had to say. When they perceived him coming they showed him every mark
of respect, and courteously entreated him to dismount and talk with them.
He did dismount, and committed a great folly, for when he had so done,
having surrounded him, they conversed at first in a friendly way, saying,
'Robert, you are a knight, and a man of great weight in this country,
renowned for your valour; yet notwithstanding all this we know who you are;
you are not a gentleman, but the son of a poor mason, just such as
ourselves. Do you come with us as our commander, and we will make so great
a lord of you that one-quarter of England shall be under your command.' The
knight, on hearing them thus speak, was exceedingly angry; he would never
have consented to such a proposal; and, eyeing them with inflamed looks,
answered, 'Begone, wicked scoundrels and false traitors as you are; would
you have me desert my natural lord for such blackguards as you are? I had
rather you were all hanged, for that must be your end.' On saying this he
attempted to mount his horse, but, his foot slipping from the stirrup, his
horse took fright. They then shouted out and cried, 'Put him to death.'
When he heard this he let his horse go, and drawing a handsome Bordeaux
sword, he began to skirmish, and soon cleared the crowd from about him,
that it was a pleasure to see. Some attempted to close with him; but with
each stroke he gave he cut off heads, arms, feet or legs. There were none
so bold but they were afraid, and Sir Robert performed that day marvellous
feats of arms. These wretches were upwards of forty thousand; they shot and
flung at him such things that, had he been clothed in steel instead of
being unarmed, he must have been overpowered; however, he killed twelve of
them, besides many whom he wounded. At last he was overthrown, when they
cut off his legs and arms, and rent his body in piecemeal. Thus ended Sir
Robert Salle, which was a great pity, and when the knights and squires in
England heard of it they were much enraged."

On the very same day the party of explorers--I find they were not the
Norwich Society, but the Yarmouth branch of the Norfolk Archæological
Society on a pilgrimage--had visited the old Foundry Bridge, heard the
story of the loss of a Yarmouth packet hard by in 1817, learned that a
neighbouring yard, once known as Spring Gardens, was a resort of fashion in
the eighteenth century, seen the remains of the Austin Friars' Watergate,
visited the Devil's Tower, heard the history of the city walls and St.
Peter's, Southgate. Dr. Bensly had read a paper at Robert de Salle's house
aforesaid. Then St. Etheldreda's Church was visited, the plate was
examined, and Dr. Bensly read another paper in the crypt of the House of
Isaac the Jew, a Norman domestic cellar, clearly to be traced from the days
of William Rufus, to a house subsequently occupied by Sir John Paston and
Lord Chief Justice Coke. Next at St. Peter's, Permountergate, attention was
called to all manner of details--personal, historical, and architectural;
St. Andrew's and Blackfriar's halls were visited and explained; a paper was
read on sundry discoveries made in excavating under the Guildhall; King
Edward VI's Middle School (the one in the ancient convent) was seen; a
paper was read on St. Andrew's Church; and, after dinner at the "Maid's
Head," the vicar of St. Peter's, Permountergate, read a paper on the parish
records. Just a few of the entries it is impossible to resist, for they are
of imperishable interest.

"1798. October 19th. Form of Prayer on the victory obtained by Admiral Sir
Horatio Nelson over the French fleet off the Nile, 1st August /6."

"Nov. 12th. Form of prayer for general thanksgiving on 29 November 1/".

"1805. December 5th. Paid for a form of Prayer and Proclamation on account
of the late glorious victory over the combined fleets of France and Spain
by Lord Viscount Nelson off Cape Trafalgar on 21st October, 1/".

No bells were rung in Norfolk that day, for the calamity of Nelson's heroic
death saddened the heart of every man in his native county. But they were
rung at St. Peter's, Permountergate, merrily enough, no doubt, in 1814,
when there was the entry: "April 12. Putting flag upon the steeple on
Buonaparte's overthrow; beer ditto 7/6."

Does this multiplicity of topics take away the breath, as is intended? Not
without set purpose has this very full day in the life of an archæological
association been set forth with some little of particularity. It is an
illustration, deliberately chosen, of the truth that a learned party, or a
party desirous of becoming learned, can spend a day comfortably in a single
quarter of Norwich under expert guidance and without wasting any time, and
yet leave a vast number of the most interesting places and remains
altogether unvisited. We have no mention here of the city walls, of
Tombland, the meaning of which is still in doubt, of the castle, of the
Guildhall and its treasures, of the Strangers' Hall and a score of matters
besides. This is not criticism, but a preliminary to an excuse in the
nature of confession and avoidance. The Yarmouth archæologists were wise in
their generation in contenting themselves with a single section of the city
on a single day. They had come, perhaps, before; they could come, no doubt,
again. What they saw and heard in a single day is an explanation, combined
with cursory mention of some of the things not seen, at once of the
extraordinary fascination Norwich must exercise over a man or woman of
intelligence, of the immense variety of its attractions, and of the sheer
absurdity of attempting to deal with them in a part of a book with any
completeness. It is better, surely, to give something of detail, if not a
tenth of what is due, to a part, than to attempt the vain task of
stretching the complex whole in outline. To him or her who has time I would
say, "Spend a great deal of it in Norwich, and you will find no hour hang
heavily."

Also it is as well to know a little of Norwich as an historical city and of
its associations, of which indeed the latter are so much the more
interesting that the history may almost be cast on one side. First of all
the idea that Norwich was Venta Icenorum may be dismissed, with Mr.
Haverfield's authority, as untenable for lack of evidence. No considerable
Roman remains of clear authenticity have been found to warrant the theory.
The castle is a complete puzzle. The city was ravaged by the Danes, of
course, under Sweyn in 1003, and it became a diocesan centre in 1094, and
has remained such ever since. It was walled, as has been stated, by the
citizens; it flourished in the wool trade early. "Worsted" owes its name to
an adjacent village, and Sir John Paston wrote: "I would have my doublet
all worsted for worship of Norfolk." It suffered grievously in the time of
the Black Death. It had its share, as we have seen, of trouble from Wat
Tyler's rebellion and from Kett's rebellion in the sixteenth century,
Mousehold Heath being the place of encampment on both occasions. Elizabeth,
also visited it in state in 1578, and it contributed its quota towards the
repulse of the Armada. From the troubles of the Civil War it escaped almost
scot free, mainly because East Anglia, the home of the Eastern Counties
Association, was exclusively Parliamentarian, except in the case of Lynn,
whereof more later. After that it is true to write of Norwich, as Mr.
Walter Rye has written of Norfolk, that the history of the last three
centuries is really one of elections and of trade, neither of them very
alluring from our present point of view.

[Illustration: NORWICH MARKET PLACE]

All these things, however, are but history in the primitive sense. There is
far more pleasure, and perhaps as much profit, in remembering that the
editor of the _Paston Letters_, a mine of information and of interest, was
Sir John Fenn, a man of Norwich; that Dean Hook, Mrs. Opie, Hooker the
botanist, and Harriet Martineau were born in Norwich. These names, except
perhaps that of Fenn, do not stir the imagination much in these days. We
are spared from study of Miss Martineau's _Political Economy_, or of her
history; and Sir John Fenn was really, as his comments in the _Paston
Letters_ and his omissions from them prove, a dull dog; but what man or
woman of literary taste can see, as I did the first day I was in Norwich,
the name Rackham on a solicitor's brass plate without remembering that the
wayward genius, George Borrow, was clerk to Messrs. Simpson and Rackham,
solicitors, or perhaps they were attorneys then, of Norwich, or will omit a
pilgrimage to the house, still unchanged, in which he lived in Willow Lane?
Then, chiefest jewel of all in the crown of Norwich is the Norwich school
of painting that rose in her midst, whereof "old Crome"--his portrait is in
the Guildhall--was the father and the founder. His pictures you may study
in the National Gallery, but only in Norwich, where he was born and
apprenticed to a coach and sign-painter, can you realize his gradual
progress, see him in imagination producing signs for the "Lamb" and the
"Maid's Head," teaching the Gurney children at Earlham, having George
Vincent and James Stark as apprentices, founding, with Ladbroke, R. Dixon,
C. Hodgson, and John Thirtle, the first provincial art society, holding in
1805, and subsequent years, considerable exhibitions, joined in 1807 by
John Tell Cotman. Only here can one realize the depth and justice of the
pride taken by Norwich and Norwich men in their most honourable school of
painting, and the eagerness with which the merchant princes of Norwich
collect the examples of the school. But there are some in the Guildhall,
too, as is but right.

WINTER. NORWICH TO LONDON BY ROMAN ROAD

     Crooked streets of Norwich--An appropriate epitaph--To
     the county surveyor of Norfolk many thanks--The London
     Road (Roman)--Roman roads in East Anglia--Mr.
     Haverfield, the greatest authority on--Some history
     necessary to understand paucity of Roman remains in
     East Anglia--The country of the Iceni--Rebellion, brief
     triumph, and defeat of Iceni under Boadicea--The Iceni
     wiped out--Their territory minor part of an unimportant
     province--No military stations--Frontier far to the
     north--Caistor-by-Norwich not a Roman fortress--Roman
     roads of East Anglia enumerated--_En route_--Tempting
     declivities and annoying cross-roads--Long