Through East Anglia in a Motor Car Part 11

So at 9.35 we started in one of the first Rolls-Royces ever made, four cylinder and, I think, a 20-h.p. (but horse-power is a mere figure of speech, and the folks who prattle of it as a basis of taxation talk more nonsense than they realize). It had a cape hood, gla.s.s screens in front of the driving-seat and between it and the tonneau, and it carried my wife and younger daughter, with two suit-cases of fair size, in the tonneau, Mr.

Johnson being at the wheel, and I by his side. We did not last so far as Aylesbury without trouble. On the contrary, just as we were leaving Thame a sharp whistle of escaping air gave notice that something was amiss, and the back off-side tire was found to be flabby. So we crawled back to a garage in that ancient town and wandered in the sun through its empty streets what time the defect was being made good. The process took the best part of an hour, and the delay proved to be providential in a small way for, in an old curiosity shop, we discovered an ancient "Bible box," of oak, curiously carved, and reputed to have belonged to the great Duke of Marlborough. It was acquired at no great price, and, whether it belonged to the great Duke of Marlborough or no, it was in the nature of a treasure, for these Bible boxes, made to contain family Bibles of large size, are rare, and little known because they are rare, and likely to become expensive when they are known because, besides rarity, they can boast substantial beauty.

From Thame we bowled on to Aylesbury without incident, and the scenery must not be touched upon now. At Aylesbury we had to wait again some time for the mechanic, whose train had not arrived; however, it came at last, and, with him on the step, and tire covers strapped on to all sorts of places, we fared onwards. But our arrangements for luncheon were marred. Mindful of the pie that vanished at Royston (_ubi supra_ as the pedants would say), we had planned to take our luncheon there. At Hitchin Nature vowed that she would no longer be denied. Still Nature was very nearly compelled to take denial, for the hotel--it looked the best--professed itself dest.i.tute of cold meat; time did not permit of waiting for hot meat; and only after pressure did the waitress consent to produce some hacked fragments of discarded joints from which, with bread and b.u.t.ter and cheese, hungry motorists made a sufficient meal. True the process of finding the fragments that went to make it called to memory the supper in _Tom Brown's School-days_, and the wonderful deeds wrought by East with his pocket-knife. That was no matter. _Fames est optimum condimentum_, as the old Latin Grammar used to say, and no doubt it was good of the unready hotel-keeper to give us anything. But why, O why, are hotel-keepers so often found unready?

Reaching Royston without further mishap we entered our manor, for the purposes of this book, and glided on at a fine speed along the road, already traversed, towards Newmarket. Vegetation was more alive, hedges were growing green, partridges, a heavy stock of them, were paired; that was all the difference, or seemed to be all. But two miles short of Six Mile Bottom, or thereabouts, there was not merely a whistle from below but a loud report. The front off-side Dunlop tire had been blown out of the rim, the cause being that it was a "retreaded" tire which had stretched until it was no longer held in its place. This burst also turned out to be providential. While the mechanic, who was a blessing, was engaged in attending to the off front wheel, I wandered up and down the road, thinking at first that this was a dull piece of country. Then my eye was caught by a bank running from the road on the more southerly side up a gentle slope until it was lost on the horizon. The bank was several feet above the level of the ground to the eastward; on the western side was a deep ditch. Both were clearly visible, were indeed large and unmistakable on the southern side of the road, which seemed to be old pasture. On the north side they were traceable, and no more, having been obscured on the east side by trees and brushwood, and having yielded on the western side to the plough. If trouble we were to have it was surely lucky to meet it here for, beyond question, we were at one of those ancient ramparts piled up in the days of long ago to enable the warriors of Eastern Britain to keep out their foes of the West. In all probability it was Haydon Ditch, which runs from Melbourn to Haydon. It really does not matter what its particular name was, or is. To give it a name teaches one no more than my friend the antiquary taught me by calling the excavations at Grays "dene-holes." Some race, at some time long ago, piled up this vast mound with immense labour. It was an Eastern race, that is certain from the relation of mound and ditch, making provision against enemies from the West, whom they might harry with stones and javelins as they strove to climb from the ditch, whose shock heads they might hammer, with stone axes or clubs perhaps, from above, as they swarmed up from below. So much is certain inference; the rest is absolute mystery, and to delay at the rampart for a day would not solve the outermost wrapper of it. Indeed, so much as a halt is not advised, unless an involuntary one should occur conveniently, or an excuse for prudent adjustment to avoid future trouble be desired. Slow down to five miles an hour, or even to ten, and look towards the off-side when you are approaching Six Mile Bottom. Then shall you see as much as is necessary, or indeed possible, of this ancient rampart and its fosse, and understand all that can be understood about it, to wit that is there, and has been there since prehistoric times.

Those who worked over the subst.i.tution of a new tire and cover were skilful and expeditious; but it is a task which even in the most competent hands is tiresome and must not be hurried over unduly. At the best it means dirt and perspiration; before it reaches the worst it is very likely to involve broken nails and barked knuckles; and the least excess of haste is likely to bring in its train a subsequent nip as Nemesis, when all the dusty labour becomes vain. So, by this time, our plans as to a resting-place for the night were receding into the distance, or rather our place of abode was coming nearer to us, if we were not getting appreciably nearer to it. That is to say the plans of other people in the like circ.u.mstances would have been suffering thus, but ours were not quite definite. We had debated in an easy-going way the question whether we should dine and sleep at Lowestoft or at Yarmouth; whether perhaps we might not even push on to Norwich whither the memories of the "Maid's Head" beckoned us. This was out of the question now, but the beauty of motoring is that, unless one has made a definite arrangement to meet friends, nothing of this kind matters. As a matter of fact we took our tea at Newmarket--we have travelled the intervening piece of road in print before--and, then deciding where to sleep, went no farther than Bury St. Edmunds that night and, greatly daring, having regard to our run of ill-luck up to that time, we shed the mechanic, as a snake sheds his skin, instructing him to telegraph for yet another tire and cover to be sent to Bury that night if possible, but at any rate by the earliest train in the morning.

So on to Bury by the same road as we had followed on the Panhard in January; but Phoebus! how marked was the difference between the late afternoon of a mild day in April and the fading light of a frosty evening in January! Few of the trees were yet showing much green, but the buds were swelling and we could enjoy the stateliness of the trunks. "Joy runs high, between English earth and sky" on such afternoons as this. The road was clear and good, it invited speed, and for a s.p.a.ce we raced a train which, it must be admitted, beat us in the long run pretty handsomely. So a second time we entered Bury, and this time made no mistake in the selection of our inn. Let there be no misunderstanding here. Lord Montagu's Road Book, which is good as any other, and strongly bound to stand the hardships of travelling (with a flap to fold over the front edges of the pages, which reminds one of Archbold's _Criminal Pleadings_ armed against the rough usage of circuit), specifies the "Suffolk"; and the "Suffolk" may be a very good hotel, but to the pilgrim who has a spark of sentiment in his composition, the "Angel" addresses a more compelling invitation. One line of German poetry do I know--no more--and the luxury of quoting it (candidly confessing that it was got by heart by way of punishment for inattention, with some others now pa.s.sed out of mind), shall not be denied to me--

Es lachelt der see, er ladet zum Bade.

As the sea laughed and said, "Bathe in my sun-warmed waters," so the "Angel" smiles, broadly and hospitably, saying, "If you are spending the night in Bury, spend it in the house full of the cheerful memories of Pickwick and the faithful Weller." That invitation was a.s.sumed, for the "Angel" is most decorously modest, but it was also accepted and never regretted for a moment, least of all when the time came for discharging the reckoning. We reached the "Angel" sufficiently early to be able to order dinner and to stroll about in the darkening town while it was in preparation. They set our feet in large rooms. Bedrooms, coffee-room, and sitting-room were s.p.a.cious and comfortable. Dinner was plain but excellent in the old-fashioned coffee-room, and I will almost, but not quite, pledge my word that the wall-paper was of that mellow and ruby red beloved of our forefathers, probably because it suggested port wine. A pilgrimage through the hotel, and the yard too, showed that it had altered little, if at all, since it was described by d.i.c.kens, except that the pump was gone. a.s.suredly there ought to be a pump, for the sake of appearances, if for no other reason, although a tap, fed from the Corporation Waterworks, may serve equally well to cool heads throbbing of a morning from overnight unwisdom in the still-existing tap-room. The "Angel," in fact, is a thoroughly good hotel of the old-fashioned type, which it is a rare pleasure to enter and to praise. More than that, and to complete the well-earned panegyric, one leaves the "Angel" in a satisfied mood. It is plain truth that we dined there, slept, had tea in our bedrooms, breakfasted well, and paid for the car's lodging in a coach-house, and that the bill for three of us was precisely one shilling less than was paid one day later for the same accommodation less dinner, and less the storage of the car for the night.

That is why praise is gladly given and those who have suffered from heavy charges elsewhere will be the first to protest that it ought to be given out of a grateful heart.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ABBEY GATEWAY, BURY ST. EDMUNDS]

In the morning there was more delay. The same wheel which had given trouble by the mysterious d.y.k.e on the preceding afternoon was found to be standing on a flat tire again. Messages to the station brought back no substantial answer in the form of a cover. A local garage had none that fitted in stock, and had to send a special messenger to fetch one from a distance of ten or twelve miles on a motor-cycle. As a matter of fact, we found later, the tire-cover had been at the station all the time, but it had been addressed to the mechanic, and our messenger had made inquiries for one addressed to his master. The delay was really welcome. Who could desire a better fate than to spend a perfect spring morning in sauntering through a town which was historic not only in fact but also in appearance? My own case was the more happy in that, during the interval, I had not only refreshed my memory of Bury and of its a.s.sociations, but had also learned a good many things in connection with it which were new to me. Of course, we entered the Abbey Gateway, to find the Botanical Garden, noted by Carlyle, less conspicuous than we had feared it might be. In fact, there was no demonstration of labels, helpful to the student but distressing to the idle eye, and it may be that the garden is no longer botanical, except in the sense in which every garden is such. It is a garden in any case, a garden with such broad stretches of close green turf as England alone can show; and on this turf little boys were playing games in the morning. A notice at the gate implied that the ground was not absolutely open to the public for games; if it were the turf would soon perish; but the price of play seemed to be very moderate; and perhaps the ground within those ancient walls serves as useful a purpose by encouraging the young men and maidens of Bury to take healthy exercise in the open air as it did when it permitted the student to realize that _cheiranthus_ is another way of saying "wallflower," or that the weed best beloved of canaries may be called _Jacobea_. Of the Shakesperian a.s.sociations of the Abbey we spoke last time we were at Bury; they came to mind none the less pleasantly for the fact that st.u.r.dy little boys were kicking a football about on the ground often trodden by kings and abbots. Of course, too, we went to see the Norman Tower, to the southward of the Abbey Gate and close to it, and St. Mary's Church. Most pleasant of all, however, was it to linger in the sun about the s.p.a.cious square, having the "Angel" on one side and the Abbey Gate on the other, to rejoice in the abundance of old-world houses, to reflect that the square, and most of the houses, if not all, looked much the same as they did when "in order to avoid the public gaze, and also to recuperate, Defoe repaired in August, 1704, to Bury St. Edmunds, where he took up his abode in a handsome residence called Cupola House." Defoe was then fresh from eighteen months in "that horrid place," as Moll Flanders called it, Newgate Prison. He had stood in the pillory more than once, but, as his biographer of 1894, Mr. Thomas Wright, observes, we must not pity him too much. He suffered, after all, as others did in a brutal age.

Moreover, Newgate was not all misery. He was allowed to exercise his pen freely while in prison, and he published one of the products of his incarceration, "An Elegy on the Author of the True-born Englishman," while he was living at Bury. That he did not come out penniless will be very plain to every pilgrim who is at the pains to look at Cupola House, which is still standing and, from the outside at any rate, very inviting.

Such are some of the memories of Bury, "the Montpelier of Suffolk, and perhaps of England," as Defoe called it, and we were not in any hurry to leave it or them. Still the sun shone, the roads were in good order, and when the car was ready about midday, we also were ready for the pleasures of the road. Our road, good and fairly flat, through what may best be described as comfortable and rich country, lay by Farnham St. Mary, Ixworth, where Euston Park was five miles to the north along the Ipswich and Thetford Road, Stanton, Wattisfield, and Richinghall to Wortham. That is only seven miles in all, and we bowled along merrily, in no mood to stop if we could avoid it, observing the s.p.a.cious area of many village greens, thwarting to the best of our ability the efforts of the geese (which accounted for the close shorn turf of those greens) to immolate themselves under our wheels. A fussy turkey-hen, too, courted the same fate, but so far as our chariot was concerned, the geese and their offspring may have been eaten with apple-sauce at Michaelmas, and the turkey-hen's poults may have been hatched and reared, and fattened in the fashion best understood in East Anglia for the London market.

At Wortham came more trouble. Once more there was the ominous shriek. The rear off-side inner tube had been blown into a rent in the inner canvas of the outer cover; it was clean gone, and so, unfortunately, was the mechanic. Cheerfully philosophical as ever, Mr. Johnson, with such help as the bystanders and I could give him, addressed himself to the task of fitting the wheel for the road again and, apart from the trouble and inconvenience to him, of which he made light for our sake, the experience was even positively pleasant in its incidents. Bystanders were many. Our little disaster had come to us half-way on the road pa.s.sing through a village green, very s.p.a.cious, fringed on the left with stray cottages, of which one turned out to be the post office. Village children thronged round the disabled car in great numbers, light-haired and rosy-faced children, all of them wearing the yellow favours of the Liberal candidate. Were we not in the middle of the Eye const.i.tuency, the bye-election in which, coming shortly after the General Election, was regarded with exceptional interest by the public? Was not this the election of elections in which, to judge from the public press, the issue lay not between two mere men, but between Lady Mary Hamilton and another lady. And the result was due that day. The district was at least warmly interested as the general public--it is not always so--and the children were in a fever of childish excitement.

They were "yellow" down to the very babies in arms; they hooted in shrill and childish derision whenever a carriage pa.s.sed with blue favours, as some did, the occupants themselves looking blue in another sense. The most hardened Tory found it as impossible to be annoyed at their enthusiasm as to regard their opinions seriously. They were too eager, too delightful, too healthy. n.o.body could have been angry with them. Further than that, they struck us all as being exceptionally bright and intelligent, and the keen interest with which they listened to a boy in his shirt-sleeves, not much older than some of them, but emanc.i.p.ated from school and now a wage-earning creature, who had attended some village meeting, was entirely charming. A man or two came up and proffered help, which was accepted. A Suffolk constable arrived on a bicycle and, seeming to have plenty of time to spare, remained to talk and to help me in expelling the air from the discarded tube, and in packing it into its bag for future treatment; and the children were round us all the time. Suddenly there was a shout, "The talleygram's come!" and a stampede across the green to the post office. In a minute or two they were all back, yelling in glee, "Pearson's in!" and at least one stubborn Tory was not half so sorry as he ought to have been. The Tory cause in the then Parliament was past praying for in any event; a Liberal vote more or less really seemed hardly to matter; the disappointment of those children at the failure of the Liberal candidate, if it had been announced, would have been far more distressing to me then than was the defeat of him for whom I should have voted if a vote in the Eye division had been mine.

On at last we went, merrily enough at first, and in 3-1/4 miles crossed the Waveney and the boundary of Norfolk and Suffolk simultaneously at Scole; Scole of the true Roman road, Scole of the ancient hostelry, of both of which full notice has been taken in an earlier chapter. Four miles more we carried on gaily, 4-1/4 miles perhaps, for we were almost free from the long townlet of Harleston when more trouble came. It was precisely the same trouble in the same tire and cover that had been met with at Wortham. This time there was a garage, where the rent in the canvas was effectually repaired, while we took a hearty luncheon at the "Magpie"; and that was the end of tire-trouble for this expedition. We had certainly had at least enough of it. And here, since the road immediately in front of us positively teems with wayside subjects, let a pause be made and a short chapter ended.

CHAPTER XI

GREAT AMBITIONS CHEERFULLY RELINQUISHED. HARLESTON TO CROMER VIa BUNGAY, BECCLES, LOWESTOFT, GREAT YARMOUTH, CAISTER-BY-YARMOUTH, AND NORWICH

Harleston--The "Magpie"--Typical East Anglian village--Flixton Park--Bungay--Mr. Rider Haggard as _vates sacer_--Antiquities of Bungay--Spa projected in eighteenth century--The vineyard--Derivations of Bungay--Chateaubriand at Bungay--A thatched church?--Beccles from the west--A vision--Towards Lowestoft--Glance at Oulton Broad--Lowestoft fails to please--Towards Yarmouth--Ambitious plans--Moonlight drive projected--Yarmouth pleases--Honest sea-faring industry--An acrostic and some ancient verse--Caister-by-Yarmouth--Sir John Falstolf--A precocious fifteenth-century Etonian--To Norwich and onwards--A moonlight drive--A sudden check--Grit in the petrol tank--An insoluble problem at night--Cheerful philosophy--To Cromer for refuge--The Links Hotel--Poppyland--Cromer no place for strangers--The haunt of a famous circle--Quotation from the Gurneys of Earlham--Seaside places are one-sided motoring centres--Scenery to westward strange rather than charming--A start in the morning--The grit still present--Labour of locating and removing--A stroll and survey of the country--Commonplace Runton--A taste of petrol--I break into jingle--Moral.

The "Magpie" at Harleston--you can hardly miss it, for the sign hangs well out--entertained us quite abundantly, if humbly, and it was agreed on all hands that this inconsiderable village of Norfolk responded better to a surprise visit than had the town of Hitchin. Harleston is not in itself an attractive village. Indeed candour compels the admission that few East Anglian villages can fairly be described as attractive by comparison with those of the southern Midlands. Berks, Bucks, Gloucestershire, and Oxfordshire certainly can each show half a dozen delightful villages where East Anglia can show but one. In them the pretty village is normal, the plain hamlet exceptional; in East Anglia the contrary rule prevails. The typical East Anglian village, or collection of houses somewhere between a town and a village in point of size, is a long and double line of unpretentious dwellings running along either side of a main road for a mile or more. Harleston is just such a gathering of houses and little shops, and there are dozens of Harlestons under other names scattered about East Anglia. This may be the reason why some of the best of gossiping writers about this part of the country, Dr. Jessopp and Mr. Rider Haggard for example (and, may I add, the little-known Miss Wilson, author of the _Friends of Yesterday_, who is now working with her brother in the Orange River Colony?), tell us more of the ways of the people, and of the conditions of their lives, than they do of the aspects of the hamlets. When they talk to us of places it is, as a rule, either of great houses, or of towns, such as Bungay, possessed of a curious history.

From Harleston, then, we started nothing loth, having accomplished so far only some thirty miles in 3-1/2 hours, of which, however, only 1-1/2 had been spent in travelling. Plans we gave up for a bad job; we determined simply to go on as long as we could and, if trouble came, to grin and bear it. The first scene noted after Harleston was Flixton Park, a very n.o.ble deer park over which the eye can range from the car, for it is divided from the road only by thin but very high iron railings. The Hall was built by Sir Nicholas de Tasburgh in the time of bluff King Hal, and the church tower is said to be Saxon. But we were all for travel. Such was the mood in which we pa.s.sed through Bungay, leaving Ditchingham a mile or two to the left. The reader, it is hoped, will not travel through Bungay quite so quickly, will not, be it hoped also, have suffered quite so many punctures and bursts, and will be in the mood to hear something of it and of Ditchingham. This district has its _vates sacer_ in Mr. Rider Haggard, whose book, _A Farmer's Year_ (Longmans, 1899), is, in its rare pa.s.sages of topography and of old-time talk, exquisitely attractive to man or woman of taste. It appeals also, in its agricultural record, with infinite sadness and with much force to all who have been brought face to face with the realities of life in rural England. Let there be no shiver of apprehension here. There is no intention of raising here that question of the unnatural war between the cities and the country as part of the propaganda relating to which this book was written. Mr. Haggard, indeed, avows openly his desire to convert as many persons as possible to his way of thinking, and this, to put it shortly, is that to permit the cities to starve out rural England is a hideously mistaken policy. The subject is fertile; but it is not for me. What is of enthralling interest to all is that in Mr. Rider Haggard we have a gentleman of estate who, after much travel, after serving his country in diplomacy and in other ways in South Africa, and after being called to the Bar (which after all happens to a good many men without making much difference to them), retired to farm his own acres of heavy land, and some others in Norfolk, during the very worst period of agricultural depression. He had done, and he did, much more than this. When he settled down at Ditchingham to farm, and to do his duty as a country gentleman, he had written a round score of books of which the graphic power was, and is, universally admitted. Men have laughed at the impossibilities of _She_ and of _King Solomon's Mines_, but very few have laid them down unfinished; they have spoiled many a hundred beauty sleeps; their absorbing interest and their skill of words is beyond question. All that power of words Mr. Haggard devoted to his propaganda and, perhaps, by way of make-weight for pa.s.sages on "blown" cattle, bush drains, and the preparation of land for barley--things which interest me deeply, but are not alluring to those not to the manner born--he goes off from time to time into talk about places. It is talk which cannot be improved upon, certainly not by me.

First Mr. Haggard quotes a curious tract of 1738 by one John King, an apothecary of Bungay, and a letter by way of appendix, saying: "Those lovely hills which include the flowery Plain are variegated with all that can ravish the astonish'd Sight; they arise from the winding Mazes of the River Waveney, enrich'd with the utmost variety the watr'y Element is capable of producing. Upon the Neck of this Peninsula the Castle and Town of Bungay (now startled at its approaching Grandeur) is situated on a pleasing Ascent to view the Pride of Nature on the other Side, which the G.o.ddesses have chose for their earthly Paradise, where the Sun at its first Appearance makes a kindly Visit to a steep and fertile Vineyard, richly stored with the choicest Plants from _Burgundy_, _Champaigne_, _Provence_ and whatever the East can furnish us with. Near the Bottom of this is placed the Grotto or Bath itself, beautified on one side with Oziers, Groves and Meadows, on the other with Gardens, Fruits, shady Walks and all the Decorations of a rural Innocence.

"The Building is designedly plain and neat, because the least attempt of artful Magnificence would by alluring the Eyes of Strangers, deprive them of those profuse Pleasures which Nature has already provided.

"As to the Bathing there is a Mixture of all that _England_, _Paris_ or _Rome_ could ever boast of; no one's refused a kind Reception, Honour and Generosity reign throughout the whole, the Trophies of the Poor invite the Rich, and their more dazzling a.s.semblies compel the Former."

Since the spring was found by Mr. King, the apothecary, on his own land, the tract, although Mr. Haggard also suggests a more romantic alternative, was probably merely an advertis.e.m.e.nt. Mr. Haggard, who states that the spring still exists and is peculiarly delicious to drink (in which quality it is unlike any other medicinal water known to me), says also, "Was this vineyard, furnished with the fruits of the 'East,' an effort of the imagination suggested by the original name of the place (now oddly enough superseded by a new name taken from the tradition of Mr. King's bath), or did it, as the picture suggests, really exist in the year 1738? _Quien sabe?_ as they say in Mexico. There have, in my time, been several old men in Ditchingham whose grandfathers may have been living in 1738, yet I never heard from them any tale of a vineyard on the Bath Hills. But this proves nothing."

Of course it proves nothing. Rural tradition commemorates the oddest things and omits the oddest things. It is past all calculation. The picture, a very quaint print, may suggest the vines. I should be sorry to say for certain to which part of it Mr. Haggard refers; it suggests swans and a wherry on the Waveney, a sportsman shooting at four-footed game, presumably stags (or perhaps it is a shepherd with a crook), a coach-and-four, and, I think, a quintain in the foreground; but Mr. Haggard says, "Pray observe the double gallows," as to which I say that there are riders close by, one of whom looks as if he had just run a course, and that the artist, if he desired to suggest double gallows, would probably have supplied them with their appropriate pendants. A little earlier Mr. Haggard cites clear evidence that a vineyard existed in Bungay in the time of the BiG.o.ds, who dominated Bungay, and continues: "Often have I wondered what kind of wine they made at this vineyard and who was bold enough to drink it; but since I have heard that some enterprising person has taken to the cultivation of the grape in Wales with such success that--so says the wondrous tale--he sells his home-made champagne at 84s. the dozen, it has occurred to me that the BiG.o.ds knew more than we imagine about the possibilities of viticulture in England. Or it may chance that the climate was more genial in those days, although this is very doubtful."

Is Mr. Haggard poking fun, or is it possible that he does not know the facts? The "enterprising person in Wales" was the late Marquess of Bute.

The vineyard was, and is, at Castell Coch in South Wales, and, although the price was hardly a market price, and the position of the grower was not without its influence upon it, the wine was, and I expect still is, sound wine. Grapes good enough to make fair wine can be grown in the open in England, were grown, certainly until quite recently, in Swan Walk, Chelsea, and doubtless would grow, quite well, on a slope in Southern Norfolk, having such an aspect as the good Mr. King described. There is no reason to a.s.sume a deteriorated climate, no reason to doubt (in the absence of evidence to the contrary in individual cases) that all the "vineyards" to be found in Southern England, for the most part, as at Abingdon, in the vicinity of bygone abbeys, once grew grapes good enough to be trodden in the wine-press. This, however, is not to say that vine-growing, albeit possible, would be profitable in England to-day. It is a great deal cheaper and easier to grow rhubarb, and the wits who are sarcastic at the expense of "gooseberry champagne" would be a great deal nearer to the mark if they followed to their ultimate destination some of the huge crops of rhubarb grown a little further north than East Anglia.

"Bungay has bygone glories of its own. Its name has been supposed to be derived from Bon Gue or Good Ford, but as the town was called Bungay before ever a Norman set foot in England, this interpretation will not hold. More probable is that suggested to me by the Rev. J. Denny Gedge, that the origin of the name may be Bourne-gay or Boundary Ford. Or the prefix 'Bun'

may, as he hazards, have been translated from 'placenta,' 'a sacred cake,'

indicating, perhaps--but this is my suggestion--that in old times Bungay was the town that pre-eminently 'took the cake.' Mayhap, for in philology anything might chance; but if so, alas! it takes it no longer." For my part, if the reason against Bon Gue be conclusive, it seems to me equally conclusive against Bun (_placenta_) Gue; and Bun Gue is not merely an anachronism, but very far-fetched at that. If we are to come to funning, the derivation "Bung-ay" may be timidly submitted. "Ay" is just a termination, Danish if you will, as in Billericay, perhaps, and it seems from Mr. Haggard's own showing that "Mr. Bung the Brewer" rules in Bungay.

He records (p. 110) that on a certain day in February, 1898, the last two "free houses" in the town were put up to auction, and he records elsewhere that there is a liquor-shop for every hundred of the population.

Bungay Castle, the castle of the BiG.o.ds, is quite gone; so is the Benedictine nunnery; so is the industry of giving copper sheathing to the bottoms of ships. But the Bath Hills are still there, and behind them, protected by barbed wire and the natural kindness of Mr. Haggard's heart, is a sanctuary for all wild things. He records also that Chateaubriand, a refugee from the Terror, drifted down to Bungay, where he taught French, was known as M. Shatterbrain, and made love to a sentimental young lady, to whose mother, when she took pity on him and offered to look over his poverty, he was compelled to reply, "Helas! Madame, je suis desole; mais je suis marie." In fact, Bungay is really a very interesting place to linger at in the spirit; but here we must go on to Barsham and Beccles, as, in the flesh, we did immediately and agreeably.

Spirits rose as we drew near to Beccles, noting on the way a curiously attractive church and parsonage on the left, and that, seen by the light of a strong sun sinking low in the west, the church seemed to have a thatched roof. That light, however, is exceeding deceptive. So, since thatched churches are unusual, to say the least of it, and I can find no allusion to thatched churches in Norfolk, I am content to believe this was a case of optical illusion. The two structures were of a rare charm in that golden glow, notwithstanding, and the probability is that they were at Barsham. Is this word "probability" too audacious? At least, it is candid and prudent.

Motorists know full well that too many halts--and goodness knows we had stopped often enough that day--are a weariness of the flesh; that it is not practicable to consult a large scale map _en voyage_; that one must often be contented to think and to say, "That is a sweetly pretty place" (or a fine hall, or a striking church, as the case may be); "I wonder what it is," and to try to locate it afterwards. One must often be in the position of a visitor to a garden of roses, yet uncertain, rosarian although he may be, as to the exact name of this or that rose. It does not really matter.

The rose is beautiful. The fatal error is to give it a name when one is in doubt. In the same way it would be suicidal to say that this pretty place was Barsham, because it may not have been, though Barsham is quite close in any case; and it has a round tower to its church, which seems to be imprinted on my memory in this instance. If Barsham it was, then the parsonage is a rectory, and it was the birthplace of Nelson's mother, Caroline Suckling, a daughter of a very famous Norfolk House.

Now the wide valley of the Waveney came again into full view on the left, a glorious prospect, and Beccles faced us. Approached from the westward on a glorious April afternoon, Beccles produced an impression absolutely and completely opposite to that which it left in January when we came to it from the southward in dull and chilly air. Shall an apology be tendered for the first mention of Beccles in these pages? Shall it be made needless by ruthless excision? Of a surety neither is the right course to take. The first impression was faithful, and it has been found impossible to convince those who shared it that a good word can be said truthfully for Beccles.

The second is faithful also, and both are true. Fortunately it is possible to quote the opinion and the words of one who is a master of descriptive English. First of the view from the Bungay vineyard Mr. Rider Haggard says: "I have travelled a great way about the world in my time and studied much scenery, but I do not remember anything more quietly and consistently beautiful than this view over Bungay Common seen from the Earl's vineyard, or, indeed, from any point of vantage on its encircling hills. For the most part of the year the plain below is golden with gorse, but it is not on this alone that the sight depends for beauty, or on the green of the meadows and the winding river edged with lush marshes that in spring are spotted with yellow marigolds and purple with myriads of cuckoo flowers.

They all contribute to it, as do the grazing cattle, the gabled distant roofs, and the church spires, but I think that the prospect owes its peculiar charm to the constant changes of light which sweep across its depths. At every season of the year, at every hour of the day, it is beautiful, but always with a different beauty. Of that view I do not think that any lover of Nature could tire, because it is never quite the same."

[Ill.u.s.tration: BECCLES FROM THE WAVENEY]

Mr. Haggard, therefore, is clearly not afraid to match Norfolk scenery against any of the restful kind on the face of the globe; but we see soon that even this view of Bungay Common and Waveney is not to his mind the best. "Had the builders of this house where I write (Ditchingham House), for instance, chosen to place it four hundred yards further back, as they might very easily have done, it would have commanded what I believe to be the finest view in Norfolk, since from that spot the eye travels not only over the expanse of Bungay Common and its opposing slopes, but down the valley of the Waveney to Beccles town and tower. But it would seem that in the time of the Georges the people who troubled their heads about beautiful prospects were not many. The country was lonely then, and the neighbourhood of the Norwich road had more attractions than any view. Along that road pa.s.sed the coaches, bringing a breath of the outer world into the quiet village, and the last news of the wars; also, did any member of the household propose to travel by them, it was easy for the men-servants to wheel his luggage in a barrow to the gate."

For my own part I deprecate comparisons of scenery, for which there appears to be no true basis, believing that the real secret of its enjoyment is to possess a catholic taste and a receptive mind in these matters. It is enough to say, and to feel, that the scenery of these parts is exceeding lovely, that the distant view of Beccles and its church, on that proud brow dominating the placid plain of marsh and meadow and river is, in a single word, divine, and that Mr. Haggard has a.n.a.lysed the charms of all this landscape with Pre-Raphaelite accuracy. To admire, to be compelled to understand why one admires, are pleasant and profitable. To inst.i.tute comparisons is unsatisfying and unnecessary.

From Beccles to Lowestoft is any easy run which we have taken before. This time we saw the eastern end of Oulton Broad more plainly than the last. It seemed tripper-haunted and bar-tainted, and it had the effect of rather setting us against the Broads. The preliminary prejudice was strengthened somewhat by reference to Mr. Walter Rye. "It is painful for one who has known and loved the Broads as long as I have, in common honesty, to say that their charms have been grossly exaggerated of late. To read some of the word-painting about them you would think that you had only to leave Yarmouth and sail up the North River to get at once into a paradise of ferns, flowers and fish, where you could not fail to fill your basket or bag; or to see, at all events, myriads of wild birds of the rarest sorts in the air, shoals of fishes in the water, and any quant.i.ty of rare water plants on the bank. The first few miles will effectually disillusionize any stranger who has been taking in the _Swiss Family Robinson_ sort of rubbish referred to above, for he will be disgusted with the very muddy flint walls of a tediously winding river dragging itself along through a flat uninteresting marshy country, varied only by drainage mills in various stages of dilapidation, and by telegraph poles. Even when at last Yarmouth Church finally disappears, after having come into view about a dozen times through the windings, and the river wall with its rats and dirt changes into the regular river scenery, he will see nothing particularly pretty."

Now Mr. Rye is a Norfolk man _pur sang_. The name has been known in East Anglia since Eudo de Rye came over with the Conqueror--he was the same Eudo Dapifer, or high steward, whom we met at Colchester. Mr. Rye has Norfolk lore and antiquities at his fingers' ends; he is most clearly and unquestionably a true lover of his native county. This douche of cold water coming so unexpectedly from him, quenched effectually for the moment the flickering flame of a desire to stretch a point by including a run or two on the Broads in a motor-boat among the little adventures legitimately within the scope of my t.i.tle. But the flame of desire rose again later, especially when the car hove in sight of a better Broad than at Oulton, and with the view of that sheet of water came the thought that, luckily, the tastes of men are not identical--else every pleasure would be so crowded as to be deprived of most of its joy, and that many men have waxed exceeding rapturous over the very Broads of which Mr. Rye has not a good word to say.

So later a little--not so much as I could wish--is said about this strange and peculiar district.

Now we were in Lowestoft a second time, in beautiful weather too, and we went slowly up all sorts of streets and a parade, and even on to some sand hills in order to see Lowestoft from a good many points of view. The result, it must be confessed, was the very opposite to a desire to revisit Lowestoft, especially South Lowestoft. True it was before the season, and Lowestoft, which lives on herrings and holiday-keepers, exporting the first and importing the second, doubtless presents a scene more gay when the esplanade is crowded with girls in pretty frocks and men in clean flannels, when the really splendid sands are thronged with happy children.

Still most of the houses are so painfully modern and, so to speak, raw, most of them also built for so manifest a purpose that the legends "Furnished Lodgings," or "Apartments," or "Board and Residence," are surely superfluous, that it fails to attract a person of only moderately fastidious taste.

There were scores of houses there recalling my one and only experience of a boarding-house. In each of these houses I could conjure up the replica of that terrible evening meal of many years ago; could see the housewife, obese but anxious, cringing to the guests, but with the eye of a dragon for the delinquencies of the hara.s.sed handmaid; the daughters, in crushed white frocks and cheap bangles, pertly and persistently garrulous; the all too affable and white-bearded father of the family, a.s.suming the airs of an open-handed host when all the time his wife was wondering secretly whether the flabby fish would "go round," and I, equally secretly, was trying to guess whether the white-bearded old loafer with the generous air, but the n.i.g.g.ardly carving-knife, had ever tried to do any honest work in his life.

Leaving Lowestoft for Yarmouth by the same road as before, we felt a sense of relief and with it a glorious consciousness of well-being. An hour or two of daylight still remained; we had been so long without stopping, otherwise than by our own will, that we felt as if we could go on for ever; the sky was clear, and we had not had enough, nor half enough, of travelling. A moon was due early that evening. It was even visible in the sky already, giving faint white promise of silvern glory to come. We had not ordered beds for the night anywhere. How would it be to skip afternoon tea, push on through Yarmouth for Norwich, dine there at the "Maid's Head," and consult our inclination as to proceeding by moonlight, perhaps to Wells, perhaps even to Lynn? It would, indeed, be very well, and in this mood we glided easily on to Yarmouth. This ancient capital of the herring-trade pleased us more, as we poked our noses and the bonnet of our car into various byways, than we had been pleased at Lowestoft. (These "we's," by the way, represent no editorial a.s.sumption, no false modesty about speaking in the first person, but simply a fourfold consensus of opinion.) Yarmouth pleased the more because it was and is manifestly a port. The smell of the herring is there, of course; the serried rows of steam-trawlers along the quay suggest that this herring fishery is a long way from being so picturesque a business as it was. Still Yarmouth strikes one as an honest, workaday place doing a good trade, and not at all ashamed of it. Yarmouth combined with "Leistocke"--Lowestoft probably--to contribute "1 shippe and one pinnace" to the fleet which defeated the Armada; and surely there is something of an Elizabethan ring about an early acrostic of unknown date, addressed by somebody--the Nymph of Yarmouth, perhaps--to its people:

Y-ou, the inhabitants of Mee, [faire towne]

A-dorned with riches both from sea and land, R-eason you have on knees for to fall downe M-agnifying G.o.d, for all comes from his hand, O-ver you all his works and mercies are, U-nto his children doth he give to eate T-he fyshe in sea, whatever the land doth beare, H-ym therefore do yee praise as is right meete.

This is culled from the invaluable _Norfolk and Norwich Notes and Queries_, as is the following string of verses by Taylor, "the Water Poet"--the description is given just shortly like this, as one might say "Shakespere, the dramatist"--who visited the town in 1622 and found it:

A towne well fortifide Well-governed, with all nature's wants supplied; The situation in a wholesome ayre, The building (for the most part) sumptuous and fayre, The people content, and industrious, and With labour makes the sea enrich the land.

A sound account of Yarmouth this is, and, by the quality of the versification, an ample justification for those persons who hear now for the first time of "Taylor, the Water Poet," and feel no inclination to ransack the British Museum for further examples of his poesy.

Hard by is Caister-by-Yarmouth, formerly supposed to have been a Roman fortress, but on quite insufficient evidence. At best, according to Mr.

Haverfield, it was never more than a Roman village; and Mr. Haverfield knows. That red-brick tower of Caister Castle, however, reminds us of the _Paston Letters_, already mentioned and one of the most ancient collections of private letters ever given to the public to be a mirror of life in the days of long ago. The castle was built by "that renowned knight and valiant soldier" Sir John Falstolf, who died in 1459. Sir John was not only a hard fighter, but also clearly a man of extended property. He had land so far off as Dedham, close to the Suffolk boundary of Ess.e.x, the Dedham that Constable painted, and we find him complaining once, "_Item_, Sir John Buck parson of Stratford fished my stanks at Dedham and helped to break my dam, destroyed my new mill and was always against me at Dedham." This complaint was made to John Paston, afterwards Sir John Paston, then Sir John Falstolf's steward, agent as we should say now, and residing in his employer's castle. The employer died; the agent, upon what t.i.tle the letters do not make it quite clear, continued to hold the castle, on which his wife Dame Paston lived while he followed the practice of the law in London even to the judicial bench. Something has been said of these letters before, but there are points to be added.