Kitabı oku: «Through East Anglia in a Motor Car», sayfa 5

Now it was my turn to fail as a pilot and a guide. It has been said that I had motored round Colchester every day for ten days at least, and that not long before. I had, in fact, followed the Essex manœuvres of 1904 in a Lanchester on business, and had stayed on for pleasure afterwards; but on that occasion, except in a futile effort to see a night attack on Colchester during pitch darkness, there had never been occasion to use the lamps, and it was astonishing to find how vast a difference the darkness made. We halted at Kelvedon to procure water; we would have taken tea there, at a roomy inn of old time, if the mere mention of tea had not seemed to paralyse those who were in charge of the house. I had been through Kelvedon at least a score of times before, yet I had to ask its title. In Witham, the long and straggling congregation of houses three miles beyond, I had been interrupted at luncheon in an inn by a sharp fight between the armies of Sir John French and General Wynne; yet I could not recognize the place at all in the gloom. Chelmsford revealed itself by process of inference; there was no other considerable community to be expected at this point, and Chelmsford it must be, and was. After this all was fresh and mysterious. Ingatestone I had visited before, and passing lovely some of its environment, which we shall see by daylight some day, had been found to be. To Brentwood there had never been occasion to go, so there was no shame in failing to recognize it. On we sped a dozen miles which, what with feeling our way in the darkness and the impossibility of calculating distance accomplished,—here was one of the cases in which a recording instrument would have been useful,—seemed to be at least a score. Surely we must be approaching the environs of London, for there was a glow of light ahead, and there were railway lights to the left, and beyond them more lights still. Not a bit of it; the lights ahead turned out to be merely Romford; those on the left beforehand must have been Hornchurch. Even Romford was at last detected only by virtue of a fortunate glance at some public office. Again we were out in the open country, as it seemed in the dark, although, no doubt, the rural illusion would have vanished by daylight. After that in a short time lamps began to appear regularly, but the mystery and ignorance of us who were travellers was not less than before. The pride-destroying fact must be admitted that a glimpse of Seven Kings Station only set me thinking of the two kings of Brentford, with whom the "seven" can have no reasonable connection, that Ilford was new to me save by name, and that I began half to think it possible that (like the Turkish Admiral who, having been sent on a voyage to Malta, came back to say that the island had disappeared) we might have missed our course by many miles, and might be skirting London to the north. Multitudinous lights stretching far away over the left front, aided the illusion. Then came a reassuring advertisement, that of the "Stratford Empire," a distinct presage of the East End of London, and before very long on our left was a row of houses quite respectably old among many that were horribly modern. The old houses were, at a guess, not earlier than Queen Anne, but the mind went back further to reflect that Stratford had been Stratford-attè-Bowe in Chaucer's time, and that there his prioress had learned to speak French "ful faire and fetisly" at the Benedictine Nunnery.

To my friend, at any rate, the environment of the Mile End Road was familiar, for he and his car had been busy electioneering there; as for me, the pangs of hunger notwithstanding, I was fascinated by the deft way in which he slipped through the traffic. Truly the motor-car is capable of marvellous dirigibility in skilful hands. Eftsoons were we in Whitechapel, breathing a murky atmosphere of naptha and fried fish, so all-pervading that, at the moment, the very thought of food seemed nauseous. It is surely one of the standing mysteries of creation where all this multitude of fishes can have their origin. So, at precisely nine o'clock in the evening we passed up Holborn out of the City of London, and, for the purposes of this book, our subsequent proceedings were of no interest.

Let us, before closing the chapter, see what had been gained by this tour in mid-winter. Well, first it was a conviction that, although motoring in winter is a cold occupation, productive of some absolute pain, for it hurts to be really cold, and of a compensating increase of appreciation for familiar comforts, it is distinctly better than not motoring at all. This conviction I should probably retain, in spite of a constitutional dislike to cold, in all circumstances except those of heavy snow when falling, which, I am content to believe, without trying it, is all but an absolute bar to motoring. If you have a screen the snow destroys its transparency; if you have not a screen it blocks your vision and covers up your eyes or your goggles. Moreover, on high and fenceless roads, where the motorist is most liable to be overtaken by snow, the white mantle obliterates the track and renders movement full of perils. But something more substantial than this conviction was gained during these three days. They were days, be it remembered, when the face of Nature, in what may be called a tamed country, is at its worst; they had been spent in traversing districts up to that time, for the most part, unknown to me; but there remained much of East Anglia, familiar to me in summer and in winter dress, which have been purposely omitted in this effort to gain a general impression of the country. I pictured to myself the breezy uplands of the Sandringham district, the pines, the heather, and the bracken, as I had seen them many a time in summer sunshine and in stormy winter; fancy filled the brown ploughland we had passed a sea of yellow corn; I remembered the beautifully umbrageous lanes and roads of Eastern Essex, where they rarely "shroud" the elms in the barbarous fashion prevailing in Berkshire and other counties; the strange crops, whole fields of dahlias for example, which I had seen in the seed-growing districts; the heavy-laden orchards upon which, it must be admitted, Mr. Thomas Atkins levied heavy toll in 1904. So remembering I concluded, there and then, that I should find ample satisfaction in my task. But at that time I had not seen a tithe of the characteristic scenery of East Anglia. Ely, rising majestic from the plain; the very singular and impressive run along the sandy coast from Cromer to Wells-next-Sea; the road on thence to Hunstanton and Lynn; the glorious expanses of heath in many parts of Norfolk and Suffolk; the extraordinary hedges of fir along the roadside near Elvedon and in many another place—all these things, and a score besides—were as a sealed book to me. The book has been opened now, and its prodigal variety of infinite charm appals me, even though a substantial part of my pleasant duty has been accomplished.

CHAPTER IV
SPRING. THROUGH THE HEART OF EAST ANGLIA

Some books consulted—"Murray" useless to motorists: proceeds by rail and observes county boundaries—Arthur Young's Six Weeks' Tour dull—Leland's Itinerary a mass of undigested notes—The Paston Letters full of excellence—Start from Abingdon—The six-cylinder Rolls-Royce—Freedom from trouble—Hopes and Nemesis—Abingdon to Thame, a bad cross-country route—Thame to Royston direct—The gate of East Anglia—The "Cave"—Royston's broad hint to James I—To Newmarket—Straight road and abundant game—The mystery of the Hoodie Crow—Wild creatures and motor-cars—Weather Heath—Appropriate name—Value of tree "belts"—Scotch fir hedges– Elvedon Hall and its game—Best use for such land—Enter Norfolk—Warrens and heaths—Thetford—Its story—Its Mound—Mr. Rye's theory dissipated by the learned—Windmills in East Anglia—Thomas Paine a Thetford man—Euston unvisited—Attleborough—Wymondham's twin towers—Their origin—Religious houses and popular risings—Kett's Rebellion—Curious legend on a house—Stanfield Hall—Its grim tragedy—A monograph quoted—Wholesale murders and a famous trial—Extraordinary cunning of the criminal—To Norwich and the "Maid's Head."

During the interval between the first and second tours in East Anglia many books, more or less promising of material, were read. Of these books it will be prudent to say a little before recording an expedition in which East Anglia was attacked, so to speak, amidships. Many of them it is needless to mention, though some will come in for passing reference. The first was Murray's Handbook to Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, and Cambridgeshire, which is well-planned, having regard to the needs of its age, and well, no less than learnedly, written; but it was published more than thirty years ago, and is therefore rather out of date as to some of its facts, and for motorists absolutely obsolete in its method. It proceeds, for the most part, county by county; its routes are railway routes; it almost ignores roadside scenery, and it enlarges, very usefully sometimes, upon the internal details of churches and of other edifices, with which the motorist can rarely be concerned; for, as it is not intelligent to hurry through the country always, so it is not motoring to "potter" at every place. The good "Murray" is really rather embarrassing to the motorist. Let me illustrate. Scole, mentioned in the last chapter, is a little more than two miles from Yaxley, on the Roman road. A brief account of Scole is found on p. 183. If Yaxley were mentioned at all (and it is worth mentioning, for the sake of its church, in a guide-book pure and simple) it would find a place in some Suffolk route, for only very occasionally does the guide-book writer allow even a railway to transport him across a county boundary. Amongst other books studied were Leland's Itinerary, the Paston Letters, in five stately quarto volumes, and Arthur Young's Six Weeks' Tour. These studies were not quite in vain, for they will at least show a reader what to avoid. Young's Six Weeks' Tour is most consumedly dull, reeking of turnips, sticky with marl, and the accounts of "the seats of the nobility and gentry, and other objects worthy of notice, by the author of the Farmers' Letters," are very rarely interesting. Some of them which are to our purpose—for of course the tour was not confined to East Anglia—shall be quoted in due season. To reading Leland, stimulated by many quaint quotations in later works, I had looked forward for years, but the second edition in nine volumes of "The Itinerary of John Leland the Antiquary, Oxford; Printed at the Theatre, for James Fletcher, Bookseller in the Turl, and Joseph Pott, Bookseller at Eton. 1745," was a grievous disappointment. The plums seem all to have been picked out by guide-book writers; few of them, if any, relate to East Anglia. The only things worthy of note were an account, perfectly straightforward, and to be quoted in its place, of the Dunmow Flitch, and some doggerel concerning the "properties of the counties of England." The material ones for us are:—

 
Essex, ful of good hoswyves,
*....*....*....*
Northfolk, ful of wyles,
Southfolk, ful of styles,
Huntingdoneshyre corne ful goode,
*....*....*....*
Cambridgeshire full of pykes.
 

Leland, in fact, cannot be commended, but that is only because he planned his magnum opus, like many a good man before him and after, without regard to the allotted span of human life, not to speak of its uncertainty. In his "Newe Yeare's Gyft to King Henry the viii in the xxxvii Yeare of his Raygne," Leland talks of his studies, of his six years of travel, and then sketches his plan. It is "to write an History, to the which I entende to adscribe this Title, De Antiquitate Britannica or els Civilis Historia. And this Worke I entende to divide yn to so many Bookes as there be Shires yn England and Sheres and greate Dominions in Wales. So that I esteme that this Volume will include a fiftie Bookes, wherof each one severally shaul conteyne the Beginninges Encreaces, and memorable Actes of the chief Tounes and Castelles of the Province allottid to hit." Leland died when he was forty-six, but if he had lived another century he could hardly have achieved his self-imposed task, even if he had been miraculously endowed with a Mercédès; and he cherished divers other projects. As it is, his so-called Itinerary is, at best, but a collection of rough notes, having frequently no sort of coherence, often corrected or added to later in a distant geographical connection. In spite of a taste for antiquity it may be put down as stiff and heavy to read, and not sufficiently abounding in quaintness to repay the trouble of the reader.

The Paston Letters on the other hand, are the best of reading, giving a wonderfully vivid idea of life in East Anglia at a singularly troublous period, and there will be occasion to quote them more than once. The edition by the worthy Sir John Fenn, stately as it is, and a joy to handle, is far from being the best. Posterity owes to him a deep debt for rescuing the letters from oblivion, but he omitted as uninteresting precisely the little fragments upon private and domestic affairs which we value most now in later editions. His notes, too, prove him to have been a rather dull dog and lacking in a sense of humour. Sometimes he scents impropriety where there is clearly none, at others he misconstrues the most obvious badinage. Thus, where John Paston is addressed in the phrase, "Wishing you joy of all your ladies," Fenn suggests a reference to the Virgin Mary, Heaven knows why. Still, Fenn rescued the letters, and the latest edition—far more complete than his—is at once one of the most entertaining and valuable of historical documents and essential to the right understanding of life in old Norfolk. In fact, the Paston Letters is one of the few really old books which a man not too studiously inclined may not prudently be contented to take as read. It is vastly entertaining, but, it must be said, it is not for the young person. A spade was not called a horticultural implement in those days, and there are many spades, and some knaves of spades too, in the Paston Letters.

Fortified with this literary foundation, and a good deal more of minor importance, I left my Berkshire home near Abingdon on 9 March in a 30-h.p. Rolls-Royce car, six-cylindered and equipped with every luxury in the shape of glass-screens and a cape hood, and driven by Mr. Claude Johnson. For companions we had my two daughters, and for assistance, if it were needed, a mechanic. As it happened there was not a particle of trouble with tires, engine, or apparatus of any kind during the 300 miles and more of this expedition, and we might have dispensed quite well with the mechanic, and with his weight. Indeed, at the end of the little tour, and for that matter after the next on another car, arose a feeling that the days of the uncertainty of motor-cars were over. Need it be said that Nemesis was in waiting for this sanguine feeling, and that, before my "travelling days were o'er" in East Anglia, one of those extraordinary runs of misfortune came, which, in motoring more than in any other pastime, justify the sayings that troubles never come singly, that it never rains but it pours? It is perhaps wise to make this statement now, for a record of motoring wherein all was plain sailing—the metaphor is hardly mixed, for there is kinship between the motion of a sailing craft running free and that of a car in good tune—might run the risk of being dull. How our troubles were turned into a positive pleasure, at the time as well as in retrospect, by the skill, patience, and good humour of this same Mr. Claude Johnson, shall be told in its proper place in another chapter.

One thing, however, may be said by way of preliminary to the account of this particular tour. There was much controversy at the beginning of 1905 upon the question whether the movement of a six-cylinder petrol car is, or is not, more luxurious than that of a four-cylinder car of first-rate design and construction. A prolonged match, not entirely free from flukes, the bane of motoring trials, has been held by way of attempt to decide the issue; and it has ended in favour of six cylinders, as illustrated by the identical car in which this tour was taken. The controversy will probably go on for ever, none the less, for it is the old case of de gustibus which can never be settled, and it is all but impossible to compare memories of kindred sensations felt at different times. Who can say, for example, which cigar, glass of old wine, sail on a strong breeze, gallop over the Downs, run in a first-rate motor-car, dive into cool water, which—almost what you will, so long as it be one of the pleasures classified by old Aristotle as coming into being through the touch—was absolutely the best of his life? Without scientific certainty, however, there may be strong conviction, and mine is that a good six-cylinder, whether Rolls-Royce or Napier, runs more smoothly than any four-cylinder car, and I have tried nearly all the best of them. In fact, there is very little to choose in point of smooth running, if indeed there be anything to choose at all, between it and a White steam car, used on another East Anglian tour. Tried by the, to me, infallible touchstone of my own spine, a six-cylinder is a very little, but still distinctly, more luxurious than the best four-cylinder car; but this is not to say that there are not a round dozen of four-cylinder cars on the market which make their passengers as comfortable as any man, or even delicate woman, can reasonably wish to be in this world.

We started just after ten, on a windy and rainless morning, in an atmosphere giving beautifully clear views of distant objects, and thereby raising some reasonable apprehensions for the morrow among the weather-wise. Our route lay outside my present manor until Royston was reached, for it was through Dorchester, Thame, Aylesbury, Ivinghoe, Dunstable, Luton, Hitchin, and Baldock; and the temptation to describe some of it, especially the run along the Chilterns, is strong, but it must be resisted. One observation, however, must be made. From Thame onwards, in spite of the tendency of our road system to radiate from London obstinately as in Roman times, much as our railways do, and as if cross-country travelling were not a thing to be encouraged, there was little reason to complain of want of directness in the road. But to journey from Abingdon to Thame it is necessary to go round two sides of a rough but large triangle, whether the route chosen be through Oxford, distant six miles, or through Dorchester and Shillingford, which is rather longer. In either case the traveller has been compelled to go a long way out of his true course, and from the turning point to Thame is about the same distance in both cases. To Royston the distance is, as nearly as may be, seventy miles, and the last part of the run, where we followed the north-west edge of the Chilterns, cutting in and out of Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, and Cambridgeshire in bewildering succession, was very exhilarating. A pretty sight too were the Chilterns, with their swelling undulations of down turf, marked out near Royston for galloping grounds and showing here and there, in the form of a flag and a carefully tended green, that the golfer has found his way to Royston. Indeed, this close down turf, this "skin" of grass catching the full force of northerly and westerly gales, is suitable to the golfer's needs as any save that of seaside links.

At Royston we found an ancient and interesting inn, actually bisected by the ancient boundary line of Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire, a kindly welcome, most benign bulldogs, and last, but by no means least, a glorious pie. The inn is there still no doubt; so probably are the bulldogs; so no doubt is the kindly welcome; but the pie vanished in a manner almost miraculous. It came in an ample dish, steaming, succulent, the crust browned to a nicety. In a surprisingly short time the dish went out, empty, almost clean as Jack Sprat's and his spouse's platter, and its exit was accomplished by a gurgle of suppressed laughter from without. Was there something of a rueful tone in that laughter? Perhaps there was. He who would feed after March motorists have eaten their fill had best send in to them a gigantic pasty, else will he go hungry.

At Royston, the gate of East Anglia, we strolled about a little, finding it to be just a quiet town of the country—there is no sufficient reason to believe it to be really ancient according to the standard of antiquity in these islands—and the intersecting point of two great roads, that followed by us, which went on to the eastward, and the road between Hertford and Cambridge. Here, according to the antiquaries of yesterday, Icenhilde Way and Erming Street crossed one another. The antiquaries of to-day question the Icenhilde Way so far east as this, laugh at the philology which would make Ickleton evidence of its existence, and make nothing of the authority of the learned Dr. Guest. Perhaps they would treat with more respect Erming Street, said to have led from Royston to Huntingdon, and to cross the Ouse at Arrington, for there appears to be sound evidence that Edgar granted to the monks of Ely the Earmingaford, or ford of the Earmings, or fenmen. Walking eastward along the spacious street we found first the turning for Newmarket, which was of present interest, and, quite by accident, a notice "To the cave," leading us into a back yard and to a locked gate, and provoking a little later research. We couldn't get in, of course. The custodian, if there be one, was at his sacred dinner, as everybody in Royston seemed to be; but Royston struck us as the kind of place in which an obsolete notice might hang unmoved so long as the fibre of wood would support its covering of paint. Investigation in books showed the "cave" to have been discovered by a fluke in 1472, but the "cave," like a good many others here and elsewhere, seems to have been merely an ancient boneshaft or rubbish pit, afterwards excavated sufficiently to be used as a subterranean chapel. Hence the sketches of saints carved on the chalk walls which, candidly, I should like to have seen close at hand.

Royston is quiet enough in all conscience now, and it is doubtful whether the motor-car, rapidly as it increases in the land, will bring much prosperity to it, although it is placed at important cross-roads. Cambridge is but 12-1/2 miles distant, and Cambridge is a good deal more interesting than Royston, as well as a more certain find for refreshment, for pies may not always be to the fore. Being at the cross-roads, however, Royston is likely to see as much life passing through its midst and to like it as little as it did in the days of James I. Nay, it may even like the bustle less, for more dust will go with it. James, who really was an ardent, if not a mighty, hunter, planted a hunting-box near Royston, his particular object being probably to course the Chiltern hares—for this is a first-rate coursing country, possessed, as is most down-land, of remarkably stout hares; and, when hares are stout, the open prospect of the downs makes coursing a very pretty sport. Deer, of course, there may have been; but the country does not look like them; and as for the fox, of whom the moderns have written and sung, "Although we would kill him we love him," he was vermin in the days of King James. To hunt the hare either with greyhound or harier, on the other hand, was a sport much loved of our kings even in Saxon times, and in Downland of Berkshire, not dissimilar to the Chilterns, there are examples of manors held on the condition that the tenant should keep a pack of hariers for the king's hunting. Whether the Royston folk had to keep hounds for the king is not clear, but "Murray" has unearthed a lovely story of their catching his favourite hound and attaching to his collar a scroll bearing the words "Good Mr. Jowler, we pray you speak to the king, for he hears you every day and so doth he not us, that it will please his Majesty to go back to London, for else the country will be undone; all our provision is spent already, and we are not able to entertain him longer." Here was a new way of conveying a broad hint. "Baby Charles" visited Royston twice, immediately before his standard was raised at Nottingham, and later as a prisoner.

The distinguishing feature of the road from Royston to Newmarket, which crosses over the south-eastern end of the Gog Magog Hills, is its undeviating straightness. It is plain from the map that it curves gently here and there, having indeed almost a sharp turn to the left before it ascends the Gog Magog Hills—which would be of little account as hills elsewhere than near a fenny country—but the general impression left was of wide prospects, Scotch firs, belts planted for partridge driving, and abundant game birds. The feeling that this is an ideal shooting country, and not half a bad one for motoring, was at its strongest when Six-Mile Bottom, famous in the history of sport with the gun, was reached. It was a day, as luck would have it, on which a bird-lover could take rapid observations of bird-life as he swept along, for there were no vehicles to distract him on the empty road, and there was no chance of his coming upon them unawares. Partridges we saw galore, cock-pheasants strutting on the ploughland, confident that they were safe from the gun by law till the next October, and probably knowing quite well—for there are few things a wily old cock-pheasant does not know—that there would be no serious danger, away from boundary hedges, until the leaf was clear in November. Less handsome than the cock-pheasants, but more interesting, because less familiar to my eyes, were the hooded crows, in their sober suits of drab-grey and glossy black, walking about in perfect amity with the pheasants. This bird is a grey mystery. In shape and dimensions he is identical with the carrion crow; carrion crows and hoodies (or Royston crows) will interbreed on occasion; their nests and eggs are of identical situation, structure, colour, and shape. Their common habits include a partiality for young birds and young rabbits as well as for carrion—I have heard a rabbit scream, looked in the direction of the noise, shot a carrion crow which rose, and found it lying within a couple of yards of a half-grown rabbit, quite warm, and with its skull split—and yet nobody knows for certain whether the two species are distinct or not. The black crows may be migrants; the grey crows certainly are. They come over to the East Coast in hordes in the autumn, mostly from Russia, where they also interbreed with the carrion crow. They come inland a little, and I have seen one or two in Berkshire, but west of Berkshire they are certainly very exceptional in England and Wales, though they are quite common and even breed in Scotland and Ireland. In fact, they are birds, of whom one would like to know more, attired in a Quakerish habit according ill with their disposition. Still, when you have no game coverts of your own in the vicinity, it is good to see them circling about over these wide spaces near Royston, and to remember that they used to be called Royston crows. The marshmen call them Danish crows also, and it is a great pity when ornithologists omit to specify these local names of birds. Hoodie, Danish crow, Royston crow are identical, and each of them at least as interesting as Corone cornix. They are all, as Mr. Rowdler Sharpe says, ravens in miniature, but it is open to doubt whether, as pets, they would be equally amusing in their tricks. We saw them in great numbers as we swept along, and, like many wild things, they took no notice of the car. It is strictly irrelevant, of course, but it may be interesting to say that, since these words were written, I have found that even a Highland stag is not afraid of a motor-car, which shows a Highland stag to have far more sense than some reasoning men.

Newmarket we have seen before, and since this time also it was passed without a halt, whereas on a later visit we stopped for a while, it need not detain us now. Our road, which kept to the high ground to the south-east of Mildenhall Fen, took us first through characteristic environs of Newmarket not seen on the former tour, past endless training grounds, trim houses and carefully-built stables, and later through the wild heaths known as Icklingham and Weather Heath, the latter actually 182 feet above the sea-level. Right well, no doubt, that last-named heath has earned its name, for it is easy to imagine, and much more comfortable to imagine than to feel, how a gale from the north or west would have swept across the fens over that heath. For that matter there is not a single eminence of more than 200 feet between Weather Heath and the gales from the North Sea, so the east wind swept it too. Here the hand of man has wrought a great and beneficial alteration in the features of nature. Mention has been made before of the belts, clearly planted for partridge driving, to be seen in some parts of East Anglia, and they must be noticed more particularly a few miles farther on, when we pass Elvedon. The landowners who planted them, and the pheasant coverts, have improved the scenery and their own shooting at the same time. They cannot, perhaps, be credited with absolute and unalloyed altruism. And soon, on this naturally bleak upland, the road was sheltered on either side by close hedges of fir, trimmed to a height of ten feet or so, such as I never saw before, nor have seen since, out of Norfolk. They cannot be meant for screens to conceal the guns from the driven birds, for the British public has to stand a good deal of shooting in illegal proximity to high roads, but it would hardly tolerate permanent arrangements to that end, even in Norfolk or Suffolk, where game is sacrosanct. There can be nothing of this kind here, nor, if there were, would it have been necessary to plant both sides of the road. No—these hedges, charming because of their quaintness, can have been planted in no other spirit than that of humanity, in the widest sense of the word. They break the monotony of the landscape, and that is something; close and impervious, they must break also the force of the wind and must form an effectual barrier to the slashing rain that the wind sends with terrible force before its breath. They are an unmixed blessing, a wonderful improvement to the conditions of wayfaring, and it only remains to be hoped that there may arise no county surveyor who, using the arbitrary discretion given to him by law, shall decree that these merciful shelters be laid low in the season of the year when his word is law.