Through East Anglia in a Motor Car

Thus, in the first part of King Henry IV (Act ii. scene 4), does Harry of Monmouth, speaking of Falstaff, but himself in the character of his own father, address himself. Argal, the cattle sold at Manningtree Fair had a great name even in Shakespeare's day. Manningtree also was, as may be seen from a memorial slab in the church, connected with Thomas Tusser, the agricultural poet of the sixteenth century, who, after being educated at King's College and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, rejected music, for which he had been trained, for farming on the banks of the Stour. This was "an employment," says a superior person, "which he seems to have regarded as combining the chief essentials of human felicity." Well, there are worse occupations than farming, and the production of indifferent music is one of them. It is pleasant to muse over Tusser's tablet at Manningtree, to reflect that he probably was a practical and improving farmer, else a tablet would hardly have been erected at Manningtree in memory of a man who was buried at St. Paul's, and to hope that to him, at least in part, was due that fame of the Manningtree oxen which made Shakespeare select them as typical. That Shakespeare and Tusser ever met in the flesh is unlikely, for Tusser died in 1580, and even that strange tribe the Baconians admit that Shakespeare was born in 1564 and remained at Stratford Grammar School until he was fifteen. Less creditably connected with Manningtree was Matthew Hopkins, the "witchfinder," appointed as such by Parliament in 1644—by the Parliament of Westminster presumably, not by that of Oxford, for Charles held a Parliament at Oxford in that year—and celebrated in Hudibras. His was the fate of Phalaris, for at last, having "hanged three-score of them in a shire," he was tried in the same brutal fashion which he had applied to others, and perished in like fashion. We have no right, after quite modern experience in Ireland, to be very contemptuous towards our forefathers in respect of their belief in witches; but still it is a little startling to be compelled to realize that they set Hopkins and his fellow-commissioners to their task in a year so full of grim realities as that of Marston Moor, of Cropredy Bridge, and of the Duke of Newcastle's departure in despair from the kingdom.

It has been well to reach Manningtree by the fairly good road from Colchester; but we must go to the westward a little, and cross the Stour, leaving Essex and our peninsula for a while if we would not miss perhaps the most precious association of the valley of the Stour. It is East Bergholt, the birthplace of John Constable, the miller's son, and here we are in the country which he once had the pleasure of hearing described in his presence by a complete stranger as "Constable's country." This was the more strange in that, like many another artist before him and since his day—the word "artist" is used in its widest sense—he was not appreciated at his full worth while he lived among men. A few days or a week spent in Constable's country, by painters or by those who aspire to know something of the spirit of landscape painting, are now to be regarded as time spent pleasantly, profitably, and naturally by men and women of cultivated taste; but the stranger on the Ipswich coach who said in his hearing, "This is Constable's country," was in advance of the average taste of his generation, for, although Constable was appreciated in France before those of his own race were awake to his merits, it is one of the cruel ironies of fate that, when the great landscape painter died, his studio was full of unsold pictures. His case, unlike that of Thomas Gainsborough, whom we shall meet soon, was one in which a stolid parent did his best to choke the spring of artistic spirit in its efforts to express itself in form and colour. It was also one compelling the quotation, "God fulfils Himself in many ways." He showed his leanings in early boy-hood, doubtless in the usual manner, when he was a pupil in the grammar school at Dedham, in Essex and close by—the tower of Dedham Church is a prominent object in many of his landscapes. Again, what country-bred man does not remember how, when the plumber was called in (he was usually painter and glazier too), undiluted joy was to be obtained from watching him at work, from working his divine putty into fantastic shapes, from unlicensed meddling with his brushes and paints? John Constable, too, watched his father's plumber, one Dunthune, to some purpose, and Dunthune was no ordinary plumber. He knew something of landscape painting, and is said to have inspired the boy to that habit of studying in the open air which, in all probability, stood in little need of inspiration. In this is nothing of unnatural novelty. Was not John Crome, of Norwich, apprenticed to a coach and sign-painter, or, as some have it, to a house-painter? The wonder is rather that more house-painters do not develop some measure of artistic proficiency.

Constable's father, however, had no sympathy for his son's budding genius. The boy, leaving school early, as we reckon now, was set to the task of watching a windmill, and here was one of the many ways in which God fulfilled Himself. Compelled to study the face of the sky with minutest care, the boy acquired that intimate familiarity with it, that joy "in gleaming showers, and breezy sunshine after rain, and grey mists of summer showers" (to quote Mr. H. W. Nevinson's words in an article he has most likely forgotten), which was the basis of his fame. Fuseli might sneer at the painter of "great-coat weather," but Fuseli had the reputation of a cynical wit to keep up. Englishmen will hail Constable for all time now as the faithful translator and revealer of the inner spirit of landscape. 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 circumstances. Perhaps the deliverance from res angusta domi helped him to paint better. Few men are so cheerfully constituted 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 superstition, 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 Passage, and of Dr. Johnson for Leyden. All this, to render unto Cæsar 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 passenger 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 passage 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 associations, 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 participator. 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 class 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 bumps I will guarantee her crossing,' and Smith agreeing to my proposal, I said, 'We are an iron vessel, let her go.' We passed safely over with about three bumps, 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, passed 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 competitor (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 competitors 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 competitor 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 class 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 assemblage 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 ashore at the Three Cups Hotel, and there this memorable battle was fought under these circumstances. 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 bloody look that crimsoned his attire. In a few minutes the crockeryware and glass 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 principal 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-class 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 assembly 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 cocking up her stern, and the Ino would pass 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 space 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.