Through East Anglia in a Motor Car Part 8

Still excuses may be made for the father. Parents have a pardonable habit of considering ways and means, of preferring the certain to the problematic, in planning careers for their sons. The apprehensions of Constable the elder were so far justified by results that Constable the younger was by no means immediately successful. He went to London in 1795, being then not twenty years of age. He came back, beaten, to the windmill and the counting house in 1797. From 1799 to 1816, married, struggling, unappreciated, he fought the desperate battle against poverty in London once more. Only in the latter year, when he was forty years of age, and his father died leaving him 4000, was he able to live in any approach to comfortable circ.u.mstances. Perhaps the deliverance from _res angusta domi_ helped him to paint better. Few men are so cheerfully const.i.tuted that, like Mr. Shandon in the Fleet and in _Pendennis_--in a novel, of course, but Mr. Shandon is a living reality--can produce good imaginative work amid squalid surroundings and domestic anxieties--perhaps he was really late in development. Certain it is that, except _A Lock on the Stour_ and _Dedham Vale_, few of Constable's better known pictures were painted before he was forty; and it is equally certain that, to the very end, he was never properly valued by his generation.

For us he is the inspired revealer of the tranquil beauties of a district beloved and studied by him dearly and closely as the most ardent of Scots ever loved and studied Caledonia stern and wild, or the "banks and braes o'

bonny Doon," and he has expressed his affection for his birthplace in words, not perhaps of fire, but of placid truth, which exactly express the character of the scenery. Of East Bergholt he writes: "The beauty of the surrounding scenery, its gentle declivities, its luxuriant meadow flats sprinkled with flocks and herds, its well-cultivated uplands, its woods and rivers, with numerous scattered villages and churches, farms and picturesque cottages, all impart to this particular spot an amenity and elegance hardly anywhere else to be found." Reflecting thus we return to Manningtree and our peninsula.

Manningtree lies at the very easternmost part of the estuary of the Stour--all these estuaries would be fjord-like if they had but higher banks--and is really quite close to our pretty Stratford St. Mary, on the Roman road between Ipswich and Colchester, as well as to Dedham and East Bergholt. From it we turn due east, and, the road following the estuary, proceed through Lawford, Mistley, and Bradfield, seven miles to Dovercourt and Harwich. There is a fairly sharp hill of 1 in 13 between Mistley and Bradfield, and another of 1 in 15 between Bradfield and Dovercourt. Mistley is part of the port of Manningtree, and its park, praised by Walpole, still survives sufficiently for the district to be most pleasantly clothed with trees. Dovercourt bulks large in the history of superst.i.tion, its church having possessed a peculiarly holy rood, to which pilgrimages used to be made. Now it is a suburb of Harwich, and Harwich, after many ups and downs, and in spite of the inroads of the sea, is doing fairly well. It was certainly a Roman station, it is, like Sole Bay, one of the few places on land from which naval battles of importance have been seen--one between Alfred and the Danes, and another against De Ruyter; it was the starting point of Frobisher on his voyage to find the North West Pa.s.sage, and of Dr.

Johnson for Leyden. All this, to render unto Caesar the things which are his, I learn from "Murray." From the same source, too, it is gathered that the introduction of steamboats lost the port much of its trade, and that railways revived it. But this particular "Murray" is old (1875). Its views of commerce need bringing up to date; its views of the aspect of a seaport are not mine. One does not expect "sweetness and light," concerning the absence of which complaint is made, in a seaport devoted to fishing-boats and pa.s.senger traffic. I can see more of the picturesque in the narrow and struggling streets, in spite of some dirt, than the writer of 1875; but on me a port or a dock exercises a special and peculiar fascination, and that all the more when, as in the case of Harwich, its waters are the head-quarters of a Yacht Club.

To the annals of this Yacht Club (the Royal Harwich) I am able to contribute some little crumbs, probably not generally known, from the _Memories of Sir Llewelyn Turner_, a book already mentioned in another connection. Would that he were alive to give permission, as he would have given it with eager kindness, to reproduce a pa.s.sage out of his genial work which gives a vivid impression of a Harwich Regatta of 1846, throws in one or two useful observations, and recalls some valuable a.s.sociations, and leaves a very vivid impression of the manner in which the yachtsmen of those days enjoyed themselves when the day's sport was over. For preliminary, it need only be said that the owner of the _Ranger_, a fast racing yacht, had asked Mr. Turner (as he was then), a resident in North Wales, and Mr. Parker Smith, an Irish barrister, to race the _Ranger_ for him at Harwich during his illness. The rest may be told in Sir Llewelyn's own words, only, beforehand, it must be noted that the yachtsman from Wales, new to the water as he was, taught the east coast men a useful lesson. Sir Llewelyn Turner's remarks concerning ignorant interference with tidal action, too, deserve serious attention.

"We joined the yacht at Gravesend late in the evening, and at once set sail for Harwich, where we arrived next morning after a rapid run. A more agreeable and satisfactory companion than Smith I could not have desired, and we both agreed that we felt as if we had known each other for years.

Soon after our arrival we took up our quarters at the Three Cups Hotel, as the cabin would be required for the spare top-sails and jibs to be ready for shifting canvas in the race.

"There was a fine display of racing yachts and others whose owners came to enjoy the sport. Several of them had come over from the Ostend Regatta, one of them bringing an enormous silver cup, by far the largest I ever saw in the numerous regattas in which I was a partic.i.p.ator. Most of the yachts'

cabins were given up for the sails to be ready for shifting, and the Three Cups Hotel was crammed with yachtsmen. Taking it all together, it was one of the pleasantest yachting proceedings I ever enjoyed. Like too many harbours on our coast, Harwich had been a terrible sufferer by the lamentable interference with tidal laws by men entirely ignorant of the science, and interested workers. The harbour is, or rather was, entered in a straight line, and then diverges inside up the bed of the River Stour to the left, and to the right of that river the tide ascends the River Orwell to Ipswich. Above the right bank of the Orwell is the residence of the man whose memory every lover of his country should adore--_Philip Bowes Vere Broke_--the gallant captain of the _Shannon_, who, in less than fifteen minutes captured by boarding a frigate of superior force. There were on the Orwell two schooner yachts belonging to Sir Hyde Parker, whose ancestor commanded the _Tenedos_ frigate which was sent away by Broke that he might fight the _Chesapeake_ on equal terms.

"Dredging for personal gain was permitted to the westward outside the harbour, with the result that the deep-water channel was diverted no less than two thousand feet from the east to the west side, a large sand-bank forming on the east side below Landguard Fort, and a corresponding destruction of Beacon's Cliff ensued on the opposite side.

"Four yachts in our cla.s.s started from a point on the harbour between the town and Walton Marsh. We had a soldier's wind (side). A brand new yacht, the name of which I forget, was on our weather-side, and the two others to leeward; and we three leeward-most vessels headed rather towards the projecting bank before Landguard Point, the weathermost yacht pressing us to leeward as much as possible; I kept my eye most of the time on the weather yacht, the master of which kept his eye on us, taking advantage of every opportunity of pressing us to leeward. So near was he that I could see his eyes most distinctly, but he outwitted himself, as he got the whole four yachts so far to leeward that unless we could cross the bank a tack would be inevitable.

"I asked the pilot if we could venture to cross the bank, the limits of which were plainly seen by the broken water. He replied, 'If you don't mind two or three b.u.mps I will guarantee her crossing,' and Smith agreeing to my proposal, I said, 'We are an iron vessel, let her go.' We pa.s.sed safely over with about three b.u.mps, and our weather companion having gone too far to leeward in pressing us down, and drawing more water, had to tack. The two others to leeward funked the bank, and tacked also; we were then safe out of the harbour into the 'rolling ground' outside, and spanking before a very strong wind towards the Cork lightships some miles dead to leeward. My plan of crossing the bank, which we were not prohibited from doing, gave us an enormous advantage, as in tacking with a side wind the three yachts had a smooth dead beat to get to windward of the bank.

When we rounded the Cork lightships the other three were, I fancy, about a mile or more astern of us. We had then to beat up to windward, pa.s.sed the mouth of Harwich Harbour, and up to a flag-vessel under the lee of Walton-on-the-Naze, a long low promontory which gave us the full force of the wind, but lessened what would have been, I fancy, too heavy a sea for us. When we had got about half a mile to windward of the Cork lightships, some one called out 'Look at the----' (name forgotten). And there, far astern of us, was our weathermost compet.i.tor (at starting) dismasted, with the water rolling in and out of her scuppers. The lower mast had broken about ten or twelve feet above the decks, as far as we could judge, and we had the satisfaction of seeing her taken in tow of a large sailing-yacht that was not racing. In a few minutes we saw another of our compet.i.tors in the same state, her lower mast having gone apparently about the same distance from the deck. This left us with only one to compete with in the dead beat up against a very strong breeze, but, as stated, the sea was mitigated by the Walton projection, and the more so as we approached it. We rounded that mark, and after a long run before the wind round the flagship in the harbour whence we had started, and as our single compet.i.tor was good four miles astern, the Rear-Commodore hailed that he would not trouble us any further, and he stopped the race; the course was twice round, with power to shorten, which we were glad was done. I was less surprised to see the first yacht dismantled, as, being a new vessel, her rigging probably stretched, and left the strain of the sails upon the mast, but in the other case it was rather odd. I have been at vast numbers of regattas and have seen many topmasts carried away in races, and in one case a lower mast _head_ with the topmast, but two lower masts out of four in a cla.s.s was a unique experience."

As to the next extract some doubts are felt, on the ground of relevancy only, but still the "Battle of Harwich," as my old friend liked to call it, was fought there, and the manner of fighting was eminently characteristic of the age, after all only sixty years ago; and, if relevance be granted, the little yarn is, at any rate, entertaining.

"THE BATTLE OF HARWICH.

"There was a fine show of yachts at Harwich at this time, and there was a great a.s.semblage of yachtsmen in the prime of life, many, like myself, young fellows of about twenty-three. As there was time before the next port we were to visit, Yarmouth, we had an idle day at Harwich, and, as Dr.

Watts says, 'Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.' As the yachts' cabins had the sails, etc., in them ready for changing jibs, top-sails, etc., we were almost all living ash.o.r.e at the Three Cups Hotel, and there this memorable battle was fought under these circ.u.mstances. My pleasant companion, Michael Parker Smith, and I went for a long walk up country, and on our return were met in front of the hotel by some of our brother yachtsmen, who said they had been in search of us to see if we would join and make a party of eleven, and they had ordered dinner for that number, calculating that we would join, which we gladly did. Another lot of nine had just sat down to dinner in an adjoining room, and the windows of both rooms, which were upstairs, looked over a lower part of the hotel, so that any one going out of the window of one room could go along the roof of the lower building to the window of the other room. It was somewhat curious that not only were we numerically superior, but we were all the biggest men. While we were at dinner, one of the nine going out of their window crept under ours, and threw a squib right along our table. He was a man with a curious head of hair, and was known amongst us as 'Old Frizzlewig,'

_alias_ 'Door-mat.' Frizzlewig beat a retreat after delivering his shot, two of us lay in wait for him on each side of our window, and while he was launching another squib we got hold of him; a detachment of the other army got out on the lower roof, and it was soon a case of 'pull devil, pull baker.' We had his upper half inside the room, and his party the lower end outside. As the other side were being reinforced, the cry on our side was, 'Shut the window,' the result being that to avoid the guillotining of poor Frizzlewig in the centre, the other side had to let go his legs. We took him prisoner, and fastened the window, and the other army going back through their room came to the rescue through our door. Then arose the din of this memorable engagement, recorded in humorous lines soon after, but now lost by me. My chum Smith was very neatly dressed, so much so that I had a light suit made afterwards like it for myself. When the battle commenced the puddings and pies were on the table. The blood was apparently pouring down the neat shirt front, pretty waistcoat and white trousers with the blue stripes of Smith, the ball with which he was struck in the chest and which called the scarlet overflow being nothing less in size than a thirty-two pounder. This ball had a minute before graced the head of our table in the form of a fine red-currant pudding, which one of the attacking force had seized with both hands, and hurled it into Smith's bosom, and the red-currant juice gave Smith the b.l.o.o.d.y look that crimsoned his attire. In a few minutes the crockeryware and gla.s.s had all left the table for the floor, or been smashed, excepting one big jug. Not to harrow the minds of the readers by a further account of so sanguinary an engagement, I conclude by saying that the mortality was _nil_, and the whole of the enemy had to surrender, the eleven being too much for the nine. Our princ.i.p.al prisoner was Rear-Commodore Knight, who was not very big, one of the smallest of his army. We treated our captives with all consideration and humanity, and did not hang any of them. We then rang the bell for the landlord, and told him to estimate the damage, and as luckily the crockery, etc., was not of a costly kind, the whole cost of this great battle only came to 3s. 8d. or 3s. 10d. per head. As far as I saw, the whole thing was conducted with the greatest good humour, and I heard not a cross word; but my friend Smith told me afterwards, when I spoke of everybody's good humour, that he and a namesake of his very nearly got to blows. Those were days when rough jokes were practised more, I fancy, than now. Every one of us had squibs and crackers _ad lib._; but a better-humoured lot I never met, the great battle notwithstanding. After the racing the yachtsmen all dined pleasantly together at the Three Cups, after a hard day's racing, and some one said there was a ball to which we could go, and off we went, finding to our amazement that we had got into a low-cla.s.s place, where there were a lot of most disreputable men and women, and on our attempting to beat a retreat we found the door we had entered by was barricaded. We then burst open another, and going down stairs found the bottom of that barricaded. Sir Richard Marion Wilson, who was with his yacht at Harwich, but not racing, vaulted over the banisters into the middle of a lot of fellows who vowed we should not go out without paying our footing as they called it. I immediately vaulted over, and stood by Sir Richard Wilson, and was followed by the adjutant of the Flintshire Militia. Sir R. Wilson ordered the ruffians to open the door, saying, 'Any man who touches me will have reason to repent it.' There was little room for reinforcements from our side as the place we had jumped into was small, but as there were a lot more yachtsmen on the stairs, the bargees showed some desire for a compromise, and said if we would order some liquor the door should be opened. Sir R.

Wilson said, 'Not one drop of anything will we give you, or do anything else, excepting on our own terms. Bring a flat wash tub, if there is one at hand,' and they at once found a large shallow wooden one, the place being, it seems, used for washing. He then told them to bring him a gallon of beer, which they quickly did. 'Now,' he said, 'pour it into the tub.' He paid for the ale, and the door was opened, and he said, 'Now let the pigs drink'; and while they were all struggling for the liquor we all walked into the street, having been completely sold by whoever gave out that there was a ball. I never was in such another blackguard a.s.sembly in my life."

I am tempted to proceed because Sir Llewelyn gives us a new view of the Suffolk coast.

"We sailed from Harwich to Yarmouth in company with two of the fastest 25-tonners afloat, viz., the _Ino_, and the _Prima Donna_; the third, the _Seiont_, though she went to Yarmouth, did not sail in our company. I have seen every one of the three beat the others at East Coast regattas, and I fancy yachting men will appreciate the following curious statement.

"The _Seiont_ and _Ino_ were singularly well matched in beating to windward, and up to the turning-point of a race they were always close together, but the _Seiont_ had an ugly trick in running before a strong breeze of c.o.c.king up her stern, and the _Ino_ would pa.s.s and leave her far behind in a long run.

"The _Prima Donna_ was not nearly equal on the wind to either of the two others, but if (which is not often the case) she had a long run without being close-hauled she beat both, and thus I saw each of the three successful over the others.

"Our trip from Harwich to Yarmouth was delightful; the land is so low that farm-carts in the fields looked as if we were higher than they, the gentle wind was on the land, and the sea was as smooth as a pond with only the gentlest ripple. We laid a plot to seize the _Ino_ and navigate her into Yarmouth, we being the largest party; and we thought if we could get aboard when they were at lunch, and the bulk of the crew at dinner, we could do it. The wind fell to a dead calm two or three times; but luckily for us--as will be seen--before we could get our boat ready to board a gentle breeze arose, and we were all soon doing seven or eight knots. I often think our beating up the narrow entrance of the river at Yarmouth at low water against a dead head wind was a masterpiece in sailing, the s.p.a.ce being exceedingly confined to tack in. All the yachtsmen had agreed at Harwich to dine together at the Star Hotel at Yarmouth, where dinner had been ordered by letter beforehand, and a most pleasant evening we had. Now my readers will learn why it was lucky for us that we could not board the _Ino_. I told them at dinner of our piratical design at sea that day, and they soon had the laugh against us: they had a powerful machine for wetting the sails at regattas, that would send water up to the topsail; and the owner said, 'Do you think after the experience we had of you fellows at Harwich that we would have let a lot of you aboard of us? We had a careful watch kept upon you, and whenever you were seen to be getting a boat ready the machine was ready for you, and we would have filled your boat with water in a short time.' What a pickle we should have been in! We were again successful at Yarmouth, coming in first and winning a cup.

"It was painful to witness the large number of people in deep mourning at this curious old town, with its quaint narrow lanes the names of which I forget ('wynds,' I think). The cause of all this mourning was a most extraordinary one. A short time previous to our advent some large travelling show had visited the town, and the clown gave out that at a particular hour on a day named he would go down the River Yare (a fresh-water river running from Norwich) in a tub drawn by two geese. A very large concourse of people a.s.sembled on both banks of the river, which is very narrow, and was spanned by a light iron suspension bridge. The bridge collapsed, and more than seventy lives were lost. I looked at the place in absolute amazement, and wondered had anything like a t.i.the of the loss have taken place; one lot must have suffocated the others."

No apology is offered for having conveyed some information concerning Harwich and its yachting memories of the past in the words of a pleasant gossip who has pa.s.sed away. But my old friend was not terse, and he had a rooted objection while he lived, which shall be respected still, to curtailment by another hand, and so, if we want to proceed with our little cruise upon wheels of a single day and to finish it, let us take luncheon at Harwich, without throwing raspberry tarts at one another, and go on our way. Luncheon over, not being of the type of motorists who cannot endure to stand on their own feet or to be at rest for a moment, let us look across the estuary to Landguard Point and, with the aid of the books, think a little over the astonishing metamorphosis brought about, partly by the sweep of the tides, partly perhaps by the hand of man, not thoughtless so much as too confident of knowledge, in the outlines of this part of the coast during historical times.

"Murray" sets one thinking and no more. "Landguard Fort (mounting 36 guns), on a spit of land now joined to the Suffolk coast (it is said that the Stour once pa.s.sed on the north side of it), was built in the reign of James I." To say thus much and no more is merely to excite curiosity without sating it. To consult Lord Avebury (_The Scenery of England_) is to obtain satisfaction on the general problem and to learn that details are of quite minor significance. He who has once realized the character, the untiring and irresistible, but in some respects irregular force, of the influences at work, will soon see how the outline of the coast may vary from year to year, even from day to day, in the future as in the past. "One of the finest spreads of shingle in the United Kingdom is on the left side of the Ore or Alde in Suffolk, reaching north-eastward to Aldeburgh, and which is still increasing by the deposit of shingle at its south-western end. A chart of the time of Henry VIII shows distinctly that the mouth of Orford Haven was then opposite Orford Castle, whilst a chart of the time of Elizabeth shows a considerable south-westerly progression. When the Ordnance map was made (published 1838), North Weir Point, as the end of the spit is called, was about east of Hollesley. It" (the spread of shingle, of course) "consists of a series of curved concentric ridges, or 'fulls,'

sweeping round and forming a projecting cape or 'Ness' in advance of the general coastline." Seen in diagram, from a bird's-eye point of view, these "fulls" closely resemble a vastly long and narrow field ridged up for the reception of Cyclopean potatoes. (In pa.s.sing, the bird's-eye view, involving an effort of the imagination, is out of date, and there is every prospect that very soon not one man or woman in a thousand, but a large percentage, will be in a position to speak without affectation of tracts of country as seen from a balloon.) This particular bird's-eye prospect, however, is that of a bird perched on the high lighthouse and looking south-west over Hollesley Bay and the adjacent land to the Naze, and it gives a very vivid idea of the struggles of the sluggish Suffolk streams before they reach the sea.

"The triangular projection encloses salt marshes, and extends from Aldeburgh to Landguard Point. Successive ridges or waves of shingle are, indeed, a marked characteristic of such headlands. Under ordinary circ.u.mstances, and when the sh.o.r.e line is stationary, each succeeding tide obliterates the ridge made by the last; but when the sh.o.r.e is encroaching on the sea, some great storm will throw up the shingle in the form of a ridge, after which another acc.u.mulation commences, and eventually forms another ridge. The development of this beach, however, has not been invariably progressive, breaches made by storms having sometimes given a temporary exit for the waters of the Ore and of the Butley River at the Upper Narrows, where the part of the channel to the south would be partially closed. The Ordnance map of 1831 shows separate knolls of shingle for a mile southwards from North Weir Point. The point no longer exists as there shown, the knolls having been united into a continuous bank, as marked on the Geological Survey map, which has been corrected from a later survey."

One more short pa.s.sage is quoted here, as tending to round off the subject under discussion, although, perhaps, it might have been quoted when we were at Yarmouth. Still, the shifting sh.o.r.e did not thrust itself upon our attention then, and now it is pushing itself forward as steadily as North Weir Point has made its progress on the maps. "The sands of Yarmouth, like those of Lowestoft, have, in recent years, been comparatively stationary.

The town of Yarmouth stands on a spot of sea-driven sand, thrown up in 1008 A.D."--it is no use therefore to look for Roman remains at Yarmouth itself--"and which crosses the outfalls of the Waveney and the Yare, enclosing a large mere--Breydon Water--the outlet of which, like that of other Suffolk rivers, is being constantly forced southwards by the acc.u.mulating sand from the north." All this is due to the steady trend of the beach from the north to the south, tending to form a barrier across all harbours and estuaries, to denude outlying capes, to fill up hollows in the coastline; and less calculable than the influence of the tide is the spasmodic influence of storms. What, then, is the moral? Of a truth there are many morals. He who buys a promontory may become a landless man. His neighbour in a hollow of the coast to the south may find himself endowed with salt marshes, whereon the sheep of his posterity will attain a flavour of supreme excellence. A port may become an inland community. River beds, the boundary of many an inland county and of many an estate out of reach of the sea, because they are accepted as eternal and immutable, are the most unstable of metes and bounds in the low ground by the side of the North Sea. Lastly, when we find the old maps failing to tally with the configuration of the land to-day, we shall only be exposing ourselves to ridicule if we laugh at those who made them.

So we have mused, looking at Landguard Point; and the indulgence has been taken without hesitation, since travel without thought is mere waste of time and of the opportunities of amus.e.m.e.nt. The motorist is not an infatuated adjunct of a hurtling machine; rather is he one who, pa.s.sing through scenes rapidly, learns to observe and to think more quickly than others, storing, as on a photographic film, memories to be unfolded and developed later, and by no means averse to linger in here and there a spot promoting easy reflection. Only he is a motorist still, and, until the rudimentary device of the starting handle has been improved upon, he will make his long halts for looking round at leisure simultaneously with luncheon or tea, or some other reason for stopping the engine.

Home then to Colchester we will go through Dovercourt again, Little Oakley, Great Oakley, Weeley, and Elmstead. It is no great distance, and there is no reason why we should not pause for tea on the way in a village inn; for the inns of these parts are not half bad, the silvan scenery and the hedges are delightful, and there is no occasion to hurry. Besides, the roads are exceeding curly, apt to be greasy under the trees also, and altogether the peninsula between the Stour and the Colne is no place for fast travelling.

It cannot honestly be said that, apart from the tranquil scenery of the country, combining abundant leaf.a.ge with plenty of little ups and downs and a freshness of atmosphere due to the adjacent sea, which is in view frequently, this drive of the afternoon is worth taking for the sake of any antiquities or a.s.sociations which may be taken into account. That is not to say that there are none such. Personally, perhaps, I should never have explored this peninsula but for the soldiery, who, I remember, had a great camp at one time in a park near Great Bentley, and a fierce battle at another time in the same district. It was rather an interesting battle, since it exhibited the difficulties of hedgerow fighting, and, still more, those of umpires compelled to adjudicate upon its results when cartridges were blank. But to me the most amusing part of it was to come at one point upon scouts of both armies, theoretically foes to the death, stealing green apples in brotherly amity from the same orchard. Still, I think, if the opportunity came without much trouble, I would explore that peninsula again in early autumn, for, apart from a.s.sociations in literature or history, apart from architecture, about which it is far easier to rhapsodize in print sometimes than it is to spend many interested minutes over it in practice, there is an undying charm in these green lanes, in the oaks and elms, in the heavy laden orchards, and in the luxuriant blackberries of the wayside. They are just England, or one of the features of England, at its best; and those who have travelled most of this world of ours will agree that any feature of England, at its best, takes a very great deal of beating.

CHAPTER VIII

COLCHESTER AND GAINSBOROUGH'S COUNTRY

An afternoon's drive--Lexden--Close to Colchester--Earlier visit a.s.sumed--Probable site of Cun.o.belin's city--Position described by the _Quarterly_--Boadicea's revenge--Stoke by Nayland--A commanding hill--The church--Constable's praise--Gainsborough at Sudbury--"d.a.m.n your nose, madam!"--Gainsborough at school--"Tom Peartree"--Gainsborough's Suffolk landscapes--Long Melford--A halt for an exceptional church--Seventeenth-century monograph on--Inscriptions in flint--Long Melford a centre of the cloth trade--The Martins, or Martyns, and the church--Its past glories--Its splendid treasures--Ancient customs--The Cordells--Cavendish, the home of the Cavendish family--Clare and "the ill.u.s.trious family of Clare"--Strongbow--The Valley of the Colne--The De Veres and Castle Hedingham--Macaulay on their fame--Their end--Little Maplestead--A round church--Back to Colchester.

A nice little drive, with a pause for tea and antiquarianism, of forty or fifty miles may be taken from Colchester any fine summer's afternoon by following something like the route here laid down. Thirty years ago this sentence would have been held to be proof positive of lunacy in the writer; now it is a conspicuous ill.u.s.tration of his willingness to be contented with moderately long journeys. It is a willingness, save the mark, which grows on the motorist with experience and familiarity with the new locomotion.

We will start by way of Lexden, but we will not halt there, full of interest as it is; for Lexden is but two miles from the heart of Colchester, and it shall be a.s.sumed that, at some time or other, the motorist will walk these two miles for the sake of his health and of his figure, and spend a little time in examining a spot of real interest. Still he shall be told its story now. Not many pages back there was occasion to mention the colony planted near Colchester, as it now is, by Claudius, and of the lethargy of the veterans who were the first colonists. They ought to have settled themselves as a community ready for defence at once.

Historians agree that, instead of doing this, they found the dwellings. .h.i.therto occupied by the British sufficiently comfortable for their purpose, and never troubled themselves upon the question of defensive position. Those ancient British dwellings, due to Cun.o.belin's migration from St. Albans (which is historical, whereas much concerning Cun.o.belin is mystery), probably stood where Lexden stands now. Such, at any rate, was the opinion of a _Quarterly_ Reviewer, who thought the surroundings fitted in well with his theory, as in fact they do. "To the north of it flows the Colne in a deep, and what must have been in those days a marshy valley, while on the south it is flanked by a smaller stream still called the Roman River, which probably made its way through dense forests. These two streams, meeting in the estuary of the Colne, enclose on three sides the peninsula on which Lexden stands, and across this neck of land, or such part of it as was not occupied by marsh or wood, two or perhaps three parallel lines of ramparts may now be traced for two or more miles, supposed to be British, from the flint celts which have been found about them." (This last sentence would certainly not be permitted in the _Quarterly Review_ of these days, but its meaning is quite clear.) "...

Near the centre of these lines a conspicuous mound still exists, which we would gladly believe to be the sepulchre of the great Cun.o.belin. A small Roman camp, or more properly a _castellum_, is still well preserved at no great distance from the south-west angle of this British fortification."

The comment of "Murray," probably in this instance the late Mr. Augustus Hare, is "Whatever may be thought of these arguments, the suggestion is interesting and gives a certain importance to Lexden." As to Cun.o.belin, obviously there is no attempt at argument, nothing more than a pious aspiration; the rest of the argument is, on the whole, rather better than the English in which it is expressed, and perhaps as little of it rests on mere supposition as we have a right to expect in a case of this kind. The only weak part of the hypothesis appears to be that the august _Quarterly_ Reviewer a.s.sumes marsh or forest where he does not find the lines of the ancient rampart. It would be safer, it is suggested, to a.s.sume marsh only or, where the elevation of the ground is against marsh and there is no rampart, vanished rampart, rather than vanished forest. The "celts," to one who does not profess to have made a profound study of British antiquities, seem to be neither here nor there in the argument. South-eastern Britons had some civilization even before Caesar came. They were tillers of the soil and, apparently, had commerce with the Continent, even in metals. They resisted Caesar by force, and their scythe-chariots (afterwards the model for the Roman travelling carriages) were not without their effect upon the legions. A people who could make these scythe-chariots, who severed the mistletoe with a golden sickle, were hardly likely to use flint knives in daily life. It follows, or at any rate seems to follow, that the "celts,"

if they are evidence of any period at all, as of course they must be, are evidence of men who lived near Lexden long before Cun.o.belin.

Still, on the whole, the argument that Lexden represents the Camulodunum of the Britons (I wonder what they really called it, for Camulodunum is about as unBritish as it well can be) is fairly strong. It is strong enough at any rate to warrant the belief that here "the British warrior Queen,"

letting her barbarian troops loose on the panic-stricken and defenceless colonists, avenged her wrongs ruthlessly and in a wild abandon of cruelty.

Sluggish Colne and the Roman river really did, we may take it for almost certain, run with the blood of Romans; and this is no figure of speech, as it usually is when battles are so described. Camulodunum was not a battle but a ma.s.sacre; Boadicea was _furens femina_ with a vengeance, and with good cause. She really had bled from the Roman rods, her daughters had been outraged, her just possessions had been stolen; the Iceni were, clearly, in a wild ecstasy of murderous madness. If ever there was slaughter grim and great in this world, Lexden saw it in the year of grace 61. Another place, some say Messing, not far off and near Kelvedon, saw the tables turned a little later. Then, said the Romans, eighty thousand British fell, and Boadicea antic.i.p.ated the vengeance of her foes by taking poison before they reached her. Still, if she in any way resembled her sisters of to-day, she had enjoyed at least some measure of satisfaction.

From Lexden, a Roman road runs all the way to Haverhill, at the south-west corner of Suffolk; but Haverhill is just beyond our route of to-day, and is certainly not worth a detour. We are going now almost due north, through Wake's Colne and Bures St. Mary to Stoke by Nayland, in Suffolk and across the Stour. Wake's Colne is reserved for the return journey to which, since that journey follows the downward course of the Colne for some considerable distance, it belongs more properly. Bures St. Mary appears to be far more probably than Bury St. Edmunds the place of the coronation of King Edmund of East Anglia; but that and his canonization, as we noted in connection with Bury St. Edmunds, were long ago, so long indeed, that if Bures St.

Mary fails to attract otherwise, the legend does not matter. For us, at any rate, Bures St. Mary is but a place pa.s.sed on one side in entering the valley of the Stour and Gainsborough's country. Whether any of the views "near Sudbury" included the remarkably striking hill on which Stoke by Nayland stands ignorance prevents me from stating, but certainly, that house-crowned hill, rising as it does from the very flat land below and the leisurely Stour, makes, as a valued picture in my possession proves to demonstration, an ideal subject for a modern artist. Its value is due to abruptness of contrast. At Bridgnorth from the Severn, and at Durham, the hills with their cl.u.s.ters of old roofs, rise more abruptly and to a greater height, are more rugged, not necessarily therefore more truly picturesque.

At Durham, however, and at Bridgnorth, we are in country where hills are many; at Stoke by Nayland a commanding hill seems all the more commanding in that it is unlike anything in the neighbourhood. No wonder artists love this quiet riverside scene. Of that scene, apart from the hill and the ancient houses, the grand Perpendicular church is the conspicuous glory. It "ranks with the great churches of the Eastern Counties." These are Constable's words, and they may be trusted the more in that he was not merely a mighty artist in landscape, a native of these parts, and devotedly attached to his native county (which, indeed, might make for prejudice), but also, as his "Salisbury Cathedral" shows, thoroughly and appreciatively versed in ecclesiastical architecture.

To me, however, Gainsborough has greater charm than Constable, partly, perhaps, because of the extraordinary fascination of his portraits of persons. The reference here is not to the fashionable portrait painter of Bath, but to the later days wherein he limned the features of Georgiana, d.u.c.h.ess of Devonshire (Heaven forbid that I should enter into the obvious pitfall of discussion which yawns for the unwary here), of Maria Linley and her brother (it is at Knole and a proud possession of Lord Sackville), of Mrs. Sheridan, of Mrs. Siddons, and of the Blue Boy. The model for the Blue Boy, I learn from Mr. Walter Armstrong's monograph, was the son of a wholesale ironmonger named b.u.t.tall in Greek Street, Soho. An excellent reproduction of the Mrs. Siddons, in the same monograph (Seeley 1894), lies under my eye now, and as I look at those wonderfully clean-cut and strong features, I can almost hear the painter saying, in his comic wrath, "d.a.m.n your nose, madam, there is no end to it." The story, retailed by Mr.

Armstrong, makes one feel that Thomas Gainsborough was a man and a brother, and here at Sudbury it is a delight to follow the story of his early days.

"He was the youngest of a family of nine, all brought up reputably and well by his father, a thrifty tradesman variously described as a milliner, a c.r.a.pe manufacturer and a shroud maker, who, no doubt, combined all these avocations and, said scandal, occasionally helped them out with a little quiet smuggling." The shroud-making industry was introduced by Gainsborough the elder, from Coventry, and he seems to have enjoyed a monopoly of it; "c.r.a.pe manufacture," as Mr. Armstrong explains, simply meant dealer in the woollen trade introduced with the Flemish weavers by Edward III into Sudbury. The house of Gainsborough's birth, once the "Black Horse," is gone. Stories of his odd but clever brothers and of his pranksome youth survive and give delight. John was an inventor in many kinds, all but a genius, never practical. Humphrey began as an inventor, but degenerated or rose to be a dissenting minister. Still, he invented a novel sundial, preserved in the British Museum, and a tide-mill for which the Society of Arts awarded him a prize of 50.

Thomas, England's Gainsborough, went to the Sudbury Grammar School, cut his name in the woodwork like other boys, covered his books with sketches. Art was bubbling in him and would not be denied. His holidays were all spent in sketching, and it is related that he once took in his schoolmaster, who was also his uncle, with an exact imitation of his father's familiar request "Give Tom a holiday." At Sudbury it was, too, that he drew a lightning portrait, afterwards known as "Tom Peartree," of a peasant whom he saw gazing wistfully at his father's pear trees, which had been sadly lightened of their burden in the preceding days, and that portrait led at once to the identification of the thief who, confronted with it, confessed.

Thomas Gainsborough was not a thwarted genius. He was sent to London at fourteen to study under Hayman, an indifferent artist and a hard liver.

From fourteen to eighteen he was loose about London, under a bad influence to start with, and that he sowed a fine lot of wild oats was no wonder. But at eighteen he returned to Sudbury and to landscape, and worked very hard at it. Here again let Mr. Armstrong be quoted, because his authority is real: "In his early years Gainsborough painted landscape with the minutest care. I know pictures dating probably from about 1748 which excel any Dutchman in the elaboration with which such things as the ruts in a country road, and the gra.s.ses beside it, or the gnarled trunk and rough bark of some ancient willow, are made out. In the National Gallery of Ireland we have one such picture. It represents just such a characteristic bit of Suffolk scenery as Wynants would have chosen had he carried his Batavian patience over the North Sea. Across a sand-pit in the foreground a deep country road winds away into the distance, where the roofs of a village suggest its objective. An old horse, a silvery sky with a fine _arabesque_ of windy clouds, and a few old weather-stunted trees complete the picture.

The execution is so elaborate that the surface is fused into one unbroken breadth of enamel. The _Great Cornard Wood_," (Suffolk of course) "in the National Gallery, cannot have been painted very much later than this. Its colour has the same gray coolness, its tone is as high, and its execution almost as elaborate." Gainsborough may or may not have been, as Reynolds said, the greatest living landscape painter. Reynolds probably said it to annoy Wilson, who was present. But Horace Walpole p.r.o.nounced one of his pictures to be "in the style of Rubens, and by far the best landscape ever painted in England, and equal to the great masters." For us the truly interesting point is that this was said of Sudbury's greatest man, and that the valley of the Stour gave to this man, Thomas Gainsborough, all his early inspiration, all his early subjects in landscape. By the way, in stating that Thomas Gainsborough was Sudbury's greatest man I had forgotten Simon of Sudbury, who probably never uttered a coa.r.s.e oath, nor drank too much wine, nor was, to quote Gainsborough of himself, "deeply read in petticoats." But let any reader who has persevered thus far lay his hand on his heart and reflect honestly whether he can say offhand who Simon of Sudbury was. Well, he was an archbishop of Canterbury who was hanged during Wat Tyler's rebellion. His fate leaves me, and probably the reader also, quite unmoved.

Now let us hie, climbing a hill of 1 in 14, to Long Melford, and tea, and really fine architecture, for Long Melford is grand and, when one halts for any long time a-motoring, a good cause must needs be offered.

a.s.suredly after the 3-1/4 miles to Long Melford, so called from the length of its street, have been accomplished the excuse needs no making. The village on one side of the green, the spreading trees of Melford Hall, itself a typical Elizabethan mansion, the exceptionally stately church and, last of all, the hill which lends dignity and variety to the whole, combined to make an ideal halting-place. By all means order tea at one of the village inns and, after it, make a thorough inspection of the church, for the interesting particulars concerning which acknowledgment is due to a monograph, undated and probably published for private circulation, apparently by the Rev. R. Francis, some time rector. The author, whosoever he may have been, transcribes much from certain MSS. of 1688 onwards concerning the former state of the church, and from this we may borrow a little. "Much about the middle of the Parish of Melford, al's Long Melford, in Suffolk, upon an hill, most pleasant for air and prospect, there standeth a large and beautiful Church called Trinity Church, because dedicated to the Holy and undivided Trinity.... Part of it was an old erection, viz. the whole North Ile, the Steeple, a great part of the Porch and p'haps the East End of the South Ile. All the other parts are of a much later erection, as by the different sort of building, and the several inscriptions still extant round and about the said Church may most evidently appear.... The Middle Ile, from the Steeple, exclusive, to the East End of the Chancell, hath one entire advanced roof, in length 152 ft.

and 6 inches, distant from the pavement beneath 41 feet and 6 inches, supported on each side with ten arched Pillars, separating the said Middle Ile from the 2 other Iles, which are in height 24 feet, and in length 135 feet and 4 inches.... The pious Benefactors concerned in the building the advanced Ile may be known, and let their memories never perish, by the inscriptions under the Battlements, without the Church, and by like inscriptions in the windows, undemolished, within the Church." Of this last sentence an antiquary no doubt could give an exact translation into modern English, but I must be content to follow the general sense, which is indeed pretty clear. The reference is to very curious inscriptions, in flints let into the walls, which, notwithstanding restoration and because it has been carried out with taste and reverence, still remain in part. The names of the benefactors follow, amongst them being many Martins, or Martyns, who are here mentioned to the exclusion of others partly because, when the church was restored in 1869, the Rev. C. J. Martyn, their patron, bore much of the expense and their clothmark, a token of the former greatness of Long Melford and its cause, is frequently mentioned; but most of all because the monograph, like many another treasure, has been lent to me out of sheer goodwill by Mr. Paulin Martin, of Abingdon, my neighbour, antiquary and healer of men. Long Melford "stood by clothing," as the saying went in the fifteenth century. So did its people, and this majestic Perpendicular church, built of flint and stone, is an abiding monument of their wealth and of their piety.