Through East Anglia in a Motor Car

"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 assembled 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 tithe 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 passed 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 passed 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 passing, 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 circumstances, and when the shore line is stationary, each succeeding tide obliterates the ridge made by the last; but when the shore is encroaching on the sea, some great storm will throw up the shingle in the form of a ridge, after which another accumulation 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 passage 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 shore 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 accumulating 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 amusement. The motorist is not an infatuated adjunct of a hurtling machine; rather is he one who, passing 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 leafage 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 associations 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 associations 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 assumed—Probable site of Cunobelin's city—Position described by the Quarterly—Boadicea's revenge—Stoke by Nayland—A commanding hill—The church—Constable's praise—Gainsborough at Sudbury—"Damn 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 illustrious 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 illustration 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 assumed 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 hitherto 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 Cunobelin's migration from St. Albans (which is historical, whereas much concerning Cunobelin 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 Cunobelin. 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 Cunobelin, 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 assumes marsh or forest where he does not find the lines of the ancient rampart. It would be safer, it is suggested, to assume 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 Cæsar came. They were tillers of the soil and, apparently, had commerce with the Continent, even in metals. They resisted Cæsar 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 Cunobelin.

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 massacre; 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 anticipated 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 passed 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 clusters 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, Duchess 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 Buttall 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, "Damn 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 crape 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; "crape 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 grasses 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 pronounced 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 coarse 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.