Through East Anglia in a Motor Car

It is not suggested that these things actually happened, but it is most distinctly suggested that, unless the learned can trace the wanderings of the father of Constantine all through 273 and show that he was not in Britain, to say there is no trace of his having been in Britain before 296 is entirely beside the question. Here we have an example of a frequent kind of historical incapacity, that of failing to realize the life of the past. The dashing young officer might, in fact, have been in Colchester very easily, and if he succumbed to the charms of the inn-keeper's daughter, the event was not of a kind contrary to human experience. It is for the sceptic to prove an alibi if he desires to upset tradition. Helena may, then, have been the daughter of a Colchester innkeeper, she was certainly the mother of Constantine. Equally certainly, when her son became Emperor, she took a great interest in Britain, which tends to show that she may have been British by birth. It is true that cities in Syria and Bithynia were named Helenopolis after her, and this might be cited in favour of her Bithynian origin, only it could not be more in favour of one than the other, since she could not have been born in two places.

Here let a little confession and explanation be made. The Quarterly Reviewer's statement that the arms of Colchester might be left to it "in token of Helena's invention of the cross of Christ," left me quite in the dark; and the darkness was dispelled in the most commonplace way by reference to books. Helena did not invent the cross of Christ, in one sense of the word, because the Romans had done so before her time. But, according to tradition, she made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and found there the Holy Sepulchre and the true cross of Christ. That is a tradition which I do not attempt to justify, or to criticize beyond saying that the pilgrimage would really be an easy one for the mother of a powerful Emperor who was absolute in Jerusalem, and that the fabric might easily have been sound in Helena's time.

Of the siege of Colchester during the Rebellion, and of the cruel vengeance exacted by Fairfax, under the relentless influence of Ireton, on Lucas and Lisle, mention has been made at an earlier point, but at the moment of mention I was not aware that the populace of Colchester, like that of most of East Anglia, was essentially in sympathy with the Parliament, and had helped its cause over and over again. It was the necessity of war that drove the Royalists—"undaunted Capel" was of their number too—into Colchester, and it may well be that through familiarity with the place Lucas was enabled to make exceptionally capable use of the outlines of the town for purposes of defence. For the Lucases were tenants in fee of the Abbey of St. John, the gate of which still remains, restored it is true. "The last abbot," says Murray, "was hanged at his own gate for contumacy in refusing to acknowledge the Royal Supremacy." The last owner, whose ancestors had come in by purchase and not by force, faced death hard by with equal resolution and cheerfulness for the cause which he held dear. The defence had been a gallant but a hopeless enterprise. Reduced to the last extremity for lack of provisions, "after feeding on the vilest aliment," worn out by hunger and desperate sallies, surrounded by a hostile population, the leaders must indeed have been weary of life. How they lost it we know; but Ireton was not satisfied with the blood of the leaders. The common soldiers were dispatched to the American plantations, were in fact converted into white slaves by the champions of freedom and of religion; and the unhappy townsfolk, who certainly had no wish to take the Royalist side, although it is probable that many of them felt personal regard for Lucas and his family, were mulcted in the sum of £12,000, a very large sum in those days. "Soon after, a gentleman appearing in the King's presence, clothed in mourning for Sir Charles Lucas; that humane Prince, suddenly recollecting the hard fate of his friends, paid them a tribute, which none of his own unparalleled misfortunes ever extorted from him; He dissolved into a flood of tears." These words, with their peculiar punctuation and their copious capitals, are those not of the stately and partisan Clarendon but of David Hume, whom Adam Smith considered "as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit."

Leviore plectro. No wise man will go to Colchester without sampling the oysters, for which Colchester has been famous since it was Camulodunum. They are traditionally the best in the world, although perhaps something may be urged in favour of the Marennes of France (but the green colour is somewhat against them), or of the giant oysters of New Zealand, which were unknown, as New Zealand was, when the tradition of Colchester natives was already ancient.

Our Ipswich oysters most likely came from the celebrated layings in the Colne, so there was no heresy in singing their praises. Many another place, and Whitstable above all others, is famous for its oysters, but only at Colchester are the layings the property of the Corporate body, only on the Colne is the development of our old friend the "succulent bivalve" officially watched from the time when it is no bigger than "a drop from a tallow candle" to that at which it conforms to the dimensions of the municipal model in silver. Only at Colchester is it eaten, or are they eaten, with a just combination of civic ceremony and appreciative abandon. Colchester oysters, indeed, have but one drawback. They are not, in these days of rapid transport, so cheap as some epicures of scanty purse might desire. For that matter good oysters are seldom to be found at a moderate price in the old world. Australia is the oyster-lover's paradise. There, in any little bay, rock-oysters may be broken off in blocks, opened, and eaten out of hand; and one orders them not by the dozen, but by the plate, which holds eighteen or twenty, at the modest price of one shilling.

Oysters were a distinct consolation during these manœuvres—be it hoped the military character of the starting point has not passed out of mind—to those officers who mourned the futility and the cost of the operations by land: they were a sheer joy to those who were indifferent on the military question. But there were manœuvres all the same, and they involved many journeys by motor-car and by bicycle to all parts of the surrounding district. The first journey I took by bicycle, fairly early in the morning, to Clacton. A broiling sun poured down upon roads of yielding surface, soaked by a night's rain, and one gained a respect for the little hills which was completely lost in the Lanchester later. They are hills, though, without doubt, and a car of low power would feel them. The descent from the centre of Colchester is sharp, the ascent in returning necessarily the same, and the termination of Wivenhoe spells hill as plainly as Plymouth "Hoe" does, and for the same etymological reason. It is, in fact, a country of pretty little hills, abundantly wooded, until the flat land by the sea-coast is reached. It is to be feared that no halt was made on this or any other occasion to notice the Roman tiles built into the wall of the church at Wivenhoe. In the roadside scenery, however, an eye fresh from Berkshire observed one pleasing characteristic appearing to be singular. The hedgerow trees were, for the most part, elms, not very tall, for no tree grows to a stately height near the sea in our islands, but very much more beautiful than the loftier elms of Berkshire, save those planted for ornament, in Windsor Park for example. These low elms spread their welcome shade—true, it keeps the surface damp and renders road-preservation difficult—well over the way from either side. There was no doubt they looked better than the ordinary Berkshire elm that, newly mutilated, is bare as a ship's mast for thirty or forty or fifty feet, and has a mere tuft at the top like birch broom, or, clipped a year or two ago, supports the same birch broom upon an apparently solid and most disproportionately thick column of opaque green. The patulous elms, too, exercised their little influence on the manœuvres, but before explaining it, let the word "patulous," suggested by memory of the first line of Virgil, and incontinently looked for in a dictionary, be justified. It is not merely a botanical term, nor of my coinage. No less a poet than P. Robinson, in no less famous a poem than "Under the Sun," wrote, "The patulous teak, with its great leathern leaves." Perhaps P. Robinson was not famous; it may be noticed that courage is wanting to dub him Peter, Paul, or even Percival; and "Under the Sun" may have been a very minor poem by a quite insignificant writer; but P. Robinson at least knew where to go for a word expressing his exact meaning, and mine, better than any other in the English language. The patulous elms, then, exercised their influence on the manœuvres. How? Some days later, when General French, not having burned his ships, was in full retreat for them his enemy, General Wynne, sent up a balloon to spy out his movements and those of his troops. Espying that balloon at a distance of some ten miles, we gave chase in the Lanchester and came up to it, just after it had been brought down to earth in the centre of one of the strange crops to be found in this part of Essex. (It was a crop, as it turned out, of bird-seed, and marked as out of bounds, but balloons as they descend know no law.) The officer of Royal Engineers had been up 1000 feet or more in the balloon; he had scanned the whole country with field-glasses from a bird's-eye point of view. The country between him and the sea, Layer de la Haye, Layer Breton and the vicinity—he was at Tiptree of jam fame—was full of French's soldiery. They were marching in column of route within half a mile of him. Yet, by reason of the patulous elms, he had seen nothing of them. We had; but we were non-combatants and neutral, and therefore silent.

After Wivenhoe, the route to Clacton-on-Sea chosen that day, through Thorrington and Great Clacton, seemed dull and was very flat. But Clacton-on-Sea was a remarkable sight then, and is always, during the season, a sight quite sui generis. Some of the things witnessed that day will probably never be seen again. The long line of transports and cruisers lying a couple of miles out and extending from Great Holland to Clacton, the horse-boats being towed ashore, were both quite exceptional. Indeed, the horse-boats will certainly never reappear at Clacton or anywhere else, for a storm broke most of them up a day or two later, and the wreckage was sold by auction on the spot. Nor again, most likely, shall we see the Duke of Connaught and his General Staff, and a brilliant group of foreign attachés, naval and military, standing on Clacton beach amidst a seething crowd of East End trippers, and mountebanks, and nigger minstrels, and shell-fish vendors. But Clacton-on-Sea and its casual visitors were true to themselves none the less, and between them they made a quite wonderful spectacle, needing to be seen by the uninitiated before it could be realized, and certainly worth realizing by any easy-going student of human nature.

My expeditions to Clacton-on-Sea were not taken by me in the capacity of motorist simply; indeed, the first of them was made on a bicycle, and the others, for there were several more to follow, in a car, when my knowledge of motoring was embryonic. Yet I found in Clacton-on-Sea one of that peculiar class of places which he who follows what may be called public motoring learns to know through the motor-car, and would certainly not have learned to know in any other way. Blackpool is another such place, visited because in several successive years it has broken out into "speed trials," and Douglas in the Isle of Man is another, to which motorists go by reason of the Tourist Trophy Race. Blackpool and Douglas are grander in their kind than Clacton. They have more Winter Gardens—I am not sure that Clacton boasts any at all—huge dancing-rooms, constructed and conducted by municipal enterprise, in which the dancing is marked by a punctilious decorum and, it may be added, by an excellence of execution, which would put the most famous ball-rooms in London to shame. But all three have two points in common. Every prospect, except that of the houses and public buildings, pleases. At each the sea gleams in the sun or crashes on the beach as the case may be. Each has its parade, esplanade, promenade, call it what you will; and this is crowded, as the beach is also, in the season of the year. At Clacton-on-Sea a few of the buildings are tolerable to the eye, and there is one hotel, not the most pretentious of them, which is more than endurable to look at, and quite reasonably comfortable. It stands facing the sea, and its broad veranda is screened by a dense fig-tree carefully trained. A better vantage ground for a weary wayfarer need not be desired.

From that cool veranda, reflecting that it is every whit as comfortable to sit under somebody else's fig-tree as under one's own, I looked on the passing and re-passing crowd on the parade, like Dido gazing from her watch-tower at the departing ships of Æneas, but in a very different mood. In truth the spectacle was both amusing and perplexing. At first sight it seemed for all the world as if hundreds, and even thousands, of smart ladies, of the kind one sees at Ascot or even at Goodwood, had cast aside all prejudices of position, and were consorting with men whom the conventions of society assign to a lower rank. Dresses and sunshades and hats were all spotlessly clean, colours were subdued and delicate. Closer inspection would no doubt have revealed to the trained eye of a woman that the frocks were ill-made and badly "hung," that the materials were cheap, which is bad, and that they looked cheap, which is worse. To a man it revealed nothing of this, nothing more at first than a vast number of girls, walking well, and some of them quite pretty, in the company of young fellows who, worthy representatives of an excellent class as they may have been, were clearly not gentlemen. Their dress alone betrayed that, not by dint of shabbiness, but rather by its excessive and ill-judged smartness. Then voices became clear; the twang of the male and female Cockney filled the air as the so-called music of a Jew's-harp, or of an orchestra of Jew's-harps; and finally a closer view revealed the gruesome fact that these dainty creatures were consuming periwinkles, with the aid of a pin, as they walked, were crunching shrimps between their pearly teeth, and getting rid of the superfluous integument by—well, by the usual process of the East End of London, without any help from the hand; in fact, by pure propulsion from pouting lips. Half of the mystery was solved. The elegant nymphs of Clacton-on-Sea were simply East End girls who had made the cheap trip by sea. But the mystery of their attire remained, was indeed doubled. Where were the "fevvers," the flowing ostrich plumes of many hues, without which the traditional girl of the East End reckons herself disgraced? Whence had the far more pleasing dresses come? Inquiry made, not of those who wore them, since their powers of repartee are proverbial, elicited the suggestion that all this pretty finery was hired for the day from one or other of the many big drapers at the East End. If so, it can only be said that the taste shown was, on the whole, excellent, and the general effect very good and pleasing. So really was the spectacle. Laughing and talking, eating endless shell-fish, and consuming really very little alcoholic liquor, these young folks strutted and preened themselves in the sun all the livelong day. They even found pennies, hard earned no doubt, to bestow upon the Pierrots and the nigger-minstrels who assaulted the ear on all sides. Of noise and jesting there was no end, of disorder no beginning. Even when, on a later occasion, I slept at Clacton for a night or two to watch the work of re-embarkation, which was as interesting as the manœuvres were silly, the sounds of revelry by night were few and far between. In fact, Clacton serves its patrons well, and they conduct themselves merrily and yet decently in it. It is a sight well worth seeing, as Blackpool and Douglas are also, once in a while. It might even serve to soothe some of the sympathetic anguish of those who mourn over the monotonous lives of the poor. But this is not to say that, for quiet folk who do not wish to take their pleasure in the East End way, Clacton-on-Sea is a desirable place in which to spend a summer holiday. It is worth while to drive there from Colchester for luncheon, and that is all.

Fortune and the good nature of a newly made friend favoured me. The transports were discharging horse and foot simultaneously in a long line extending from Clacton, indeed almost from St. Osyth, to a point beyond Great Holland to the north-east. The very idea of a bicycle was repugnant to me when, as luck would have it, I encountered another correspondent who had a Napier at his disposal. Off we whirred, along conventional seaside roads, and up, from the flat ground whereon Clacton-on-Sea stands, climbing a sensible but not difficult acclivity until we had almost reached Great Holland. A little farther on, but unvisited, was Walton-on-the-Naze, another of those parts of the east coast which have suffered from the relentless greed of the sea. Nay, in times past, the sea had gone very near to sacrilege, for it has devoured the lands with which a prebend of St. Paul's was endowed. But save for him who desires fossils, and coprolites especially, the most uninteresting of all fossils, which may be found in abundance in the cliff, a visit to Walton is not recommended. Walton may be styled Walton-le-Soken, and Kirkby and Thorpe hard by are also finished off by "le-Soken." The expression has its legal and historical interest, for it shows that the lords of each possessed the power of "sac and soc," and, in fact, a power of holding special courts. But this does not serve to make the places themselves at all interesting and, to put it bluntly, this country by the sea in these parts is not attractive. The rest of our day's drive, before we returned to Colchester—the bicycle, I may say, remained at Clacton unmourned until the time came for leaving the district—took us near to a series of bivouacs, of no permanent interest, and as far as St. Osyth, which lies on the opposite side to Brightlingsea of a little tributary of the Colne, crossed by a ferry. Time was abundant, and it has been matter for frequent regret since that, merely through ignorance of that which was close at hand, I missed seeing the obviously interesting remains of the Priory, in its restored form, and the church, said to date back to St. Osyth herself, who was the wife of Suthred, King of the East Angles. When Suthred flourished I know no more than I do any reason why others should miss that which I, having then no project of this kind formed, omitted. Brightlingsea over the ferry is, by all accounts, not worth a visit, although it was one of the Cinque Ports.

So, as a matter of strict narrative, back I fared that evening to the temporary home at the "Red Lion" and, as has been stated previously, I saw something of the country in the immediate vicinity of Colchester to the south-east by east, and of our soldiery, early the next morning. Later in the day—for a day beginning at 4 a.m. is not short—there was abundant opportunity for making preliminary study of Colchester, and during my stay an immense number of places were seen and many routes were traversed at one time or another. The places were seen and the routes were taken as the tide of battle rolled, or as it was expected to roll, which did not always come to the same thing; but that was an order of visitation dictated by outside circumstances, and not to be recommended to those who are quite at liberty to follow their own fancy. So, during a leisurely drive of a morning and an afternoon, we will go in the spirit to a number of places, every one of which has been inspected from a motor-car, although not necessarily in the order named.

Between the estuaries of the Colne and the Stour lies a peninsula, part of which has already been treated, and the rest of it is now our subject. It is by no means a mountainous tract. According to a coloured contour map lying before me no single eminence in it is more than two hundred and fifty feet above the sea-level; but it would be a grave mistake to put down this part of Essex as a flat country. It is, in fact, undulating, and if, to carry on the metaphor, none of the waves are Atlantic rollers, a good many of them are in the nature of short and choppy seas. The Lanchester, which there need be the less hesitation in praising in that the makers in all probability would not construct or deliver its sister machine now, made merry with most of these hills, but of the other cars, of which the name was legion in those days of sham-fighting, we passed many crawling up steep little ascents and many others at a standstill. One such hill, at least, we encounter in this drive, between Ardleigh and Manningtree, where the gradient is 1 in 13; hardly a mere nothing even from the standpoint of 1906, but not long since quite worthy to be regarded as a serious obstacle. Moreover the trees are abundant, the hedges thick and well kept, the land highly cultivated, and the whole is entertaining and restful to the eye, although the curvatures of the roads and the screening hedges call for the exercise of exact care in driving.

We start then from Colchester at such time in the morning as may seem good, and ask for the Ardleigh road. Five miles take us to Ardleigh, and here we come at once upon the industry which has the indirect effect of giving to the scenery of Essex peculiar characteristics of detail. Between Ardleigh and Dedham—Constable's Dedham—lies the ground cultivated for special purposes by Messrs. Carter, of Holborn, of whom it is but plain truth to say that they are among the most prominent seed-growers of this country. Many of my little tours in Essex were made in company with an officer whose duty it had been to mark with flags fields which the foot of the soldier must not trample upon, whose duty it would be afterwards to assess the compensation to be given to farmers for damage done. One of our early conversations ran somewhat to this effect:

Author. "It seems to me you might save a lot of expense next time by placing flags where the troops may go, not in the forbidden ground. You would not need nearly so many flags. How on earth are troops marching along this road to learn anything? No sooner have they thrown out men to feel their way for them and to protect them from being taken in flank, than the men must come back to the road to avoid a patch of common swedes or mangels."

Compensation Officer. "Yes, it looks like that; but you must remember these are not ordinary swedes or mangles."

Author. "What do you mean? They look pretty commonplace. We should think nothing of walking through roots as good, or better, after partridges at home."

Compensation Officer. "Of course we should; but I tell you these are not ordinary roots. They are all being grown for seed; they may be choice kinds produced, for all I know, as the result of years of experiment. You never know what you may come upon next in this seed-growing country. You will find whole fields of Delphinium, Dahlia, Penstemon, Lupin, almost any flowering plant, to say nothing of crops of strange plants, whose very appearance is unknown to you."

Author. "Did the great men of the War Office know all this when they decided to hold manœuvres here? If so, it seems to me, they made a foolish choice of their ground, because, while the value of the training is reduced by the necessary cramping of movement, the compensation payable is sure to be out of all reason."

And the Compensation Officer answered never a word, for the purposes of this book, but probably he thought the more. His description of the country was justified abundantly. The very grass might be, very likely was, being grown for special lawn seed, and, over and over again, one passed acres of early autumnal flowers in full bloom, which set an eager gardener (for man may be gardener and motorist) thinking of additions to be made to his own distant plot. On we fared, breasting that hill of 1 in 13, and in 2-3/4 miles we are at Manningtree. Now, Manningtree is ancient, and it has a history.

"Why dost thou converse with that trunk of humours, that bolting-hutch of beastliness, that swollen parcel of dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuffed cloak-bag of guts, that roasted Manningtree ox with the pudding in his belly, that reverend vice, that grey iniquity, that father ruffian, that vanity in years?"