GREAT AMBITIONS CHEERFULLY RELINQUISHED. HARLESTON TO CROMER viâ BUNGAY, BECCLES, LOWESTOFT, GREAT YARMOUTH, CAISTER-BY-YARMOUTH, AND NORWICH
Harleston—The "Magpie"—Typical East Anglian village—Flixton Park—Bungay—Mr. Rider Haggard as vates sacer—Antiquities of Bungay—Spa projected in eighteenth century—The vineyard—Derivations of Bungay—Chateaubriand at Bungay—A thatched church?—Beccles from the west—A vision—Towards Lowestoft—Glance at Oulton Broad—Lowestoft fails to please—Towards Yarmouth—Ambitious plans—Moonlight drive projected—Yarmouth pleases—Honest sea-faring industry—An acrostic and some ancient verse—Caister-by-Yarmouth—Sir John Falstolf—A precocious fifteenth-century Etonian—To Norwich and onwards—A moonlight drive—A sudden check—Grit in the petrol tank—An insoluble problem at night—Cheerful philosophy—To Cromer for refuge—The Links Hotel—Poppyland—Cromer no place for strangers—The haunt of a famous circle—Quotation from the Gurneys of Earlham—Seaside places are one-sided motoring centres—Scenery to westward strange rather than charming—A start in the morning—The grit still present—Labour of locating and removing—A stroll and survey of the country—Commonplace Runton—A taste of petrol—I break into jingle—Moral.
The "Magpie" at Harleston—you can hardly miss it, for the sign hangs well out—entertained us quite abundantly, if humbly, and it was agreed on all hands that this inconsiderable village of Norfolk responded better to a surprise visit than had the town of Hitchin. Harleston is not in itself an attractive village. Indeed candour compels the admission that few East Anglian villages can fairly be described as attractive by comparison with those of the southern Midlands. Berks, Bucks, Gloucestershire, and Oxfordshire certainly can each show half a dozen delightful villages where East Anglia can show but one. In them the pretty village is normal, the plain hamlet exceptional; in East Anglia the contrary rule prevails. The typical East Anglian village, or collection of houses somewhere between a town and a village in point of size, is a long and double line of unpretentious dwellings running along either side of a main road for a mile or more. Harleston is just such a gathering of houses and little shops, and there are dozens of Harlestons under other names scattered about East Anglia. This may be the reason why some of the best of gossiping writers about this part of the country, Dr. Jessopp and Mr. Rider Haggard for example (and, may I add, the little-known Miss Wilson, author of the Friends of Yesterday, who is now working with her brother in the Orange River Colony?), tell us more of the ways of the people, and of the conditions of their lives, than they do of the aspects of the hamlets. When they talk to us of places it is, as a rule, either of great houses, or of towns, such as Bungay, possessed of a curious history.
From Harleston, then, we started nothing loth, having accomplished so far only some thirty miles in 3-1/2 hours, of which, however, only 1-1/2 had been spent in travelling. Plans we gave up for a bad job; we determined simply to go on as long as we could and, if trouble came, to grin and bear it. The first scene noted after Harleston was Flixton Park, a very noble deer park over which the eye can range from the car, for it is divided from the road only by thin but very high iron railings. The Hall was built by Sir Nicholas de Tasburgh in the time of bluff King Hal, and the church tower is said to be Saxon. But we were all for travel. Such was the mood in which we passed through Bungay, leaving Ditchingham a mile or two to the left. The reader, it is hoped, will not travel through Bungay quite so quickly, will not, be it hoped also, have suffered quite so many punctures and bursts, and will be in the mood to hear something of it and of Ditchingham. This district has its vates sacer in Mr. Rider Haggard, whose book, A Farmer's Year (Longmans, 1899), is, in its rare passages of topography and of old-time talk, exquisitely attractive to man or woman of taste. It appeals also, in its agricultural record, with infinite sadness and with much force to all who have been brought face to face with the realities of life in rural England. Let there be no shiver of apprehension here. There is no intention of raising here that question of the unnatural war between the cities and the country as part of the propaganda relating to which this book was written. Mr. Haggard, indeed, avows openly his desire to convert as many persons as possible to his way of thinking, and this, to put it shortly, is that to permit the cities to starve out rural England is a hideously mistaken policy. The subject is fertile; but it is not for me. What is of enthralling interest to all is that in Mr. Rider Haggard we have a gentleman of estate who, after much travel, after serving his country in diplomacy and in other ways in South Africa, and after being called to the Bar (which after all happens to a good many men without making much difference to them), retired to farm his own acres of heavy land, and some others in Norfolk, during the very worst period of agricultural depression. He had done, and he did, much more than this. When he settled down at Ditchingham to farm, and to do his duty as a country gentleman, he had written a round score of books of which the graphic power was, and is, universally admitted. Men have laughed at the impossibilities of She and of King Solomon's Mines, but very few have laid them down unfinished; they have spoiled many a hundred beauty sleeps; their absorbing interest and their skill of words is beyond question. All that power of words Mr. Haggard devoted to his propaganda and, perhaps, by way of make-weight for passages on "blown" cattle, bush drains, and the preparation of land for barley—things which interest me deeply, but are not alluring to those not to the manner born—he goes off from time to time into talk about places. It is talk which cannot be improved upon, certainly not by me.
First Mr. Haggard quotes a curious tract of 1738 by one John King, an apothecary of Bungay, and a letter by way of appendix, saying: "Those lovely hills which include the flowery Plain are variegated with all that can ravish the astonish'd Sight; they arise from the winding Mazes of the River Waveney, enrich'd with the utmost variety the watr'y Element is capable of producing. Upon the Neck of this Peninsula the Castle and Town of Bungay (now startled at its approaching Grandeur) is situated on a pleasing Ascent to view the Pride of Nature on the other Side, which the Goddesses have chose for their earthly Paradise, where the Sun at its first Appearance makes a kindly Visit to a steep and fertile Vineyard, richly stored with the choicest Plants from Burgundy, Champaigne, Provence and whatever the East can furnish us with. Near the Bottom of this is placed the Grotto or Bath itself, beautified on one side with Oziers, Groves and Meadows, on the other with Gardens, Fruits, shady Walks and all the Decorations of a rural Innocence.
"The Building is designedly plain and neat, because the least attempt of artful Magnificence would by alluring the Eyes of Strangers, deprive them of those profuse Pleasures which Nature has already provided.
"As to the Bathing there is a Mixture of all that England, Paris or Rome could ever boast of; no one's refused a kind Reception, Honour and Generosity reign throughout the whole, the Trophies of the Poor invite the Rich, and their more dazzling Assemblies compel the Former."
Since the spring was found by Mr. King, the apothecary, on his own land, the tract, although Mr. Haggard also suggests a more romantic alternative, was probably merely an advertisement. Mr. Haggard, who states that the spring still exists and is peculiarly delicious to drink (in which quality it is unlike any other medicinal water known to me), says also, "Was this vineyard, furnished with the fruits of the 'East,' an effort of the imagination suggested by the original name of the place (now oddly enough superseded by a new name taken from the tradition of Mr. King's bath), or did it, as the picture suggests, really exist in the year 1738? Quien sabe? as they say in Mexico. There have, in my time, been several old men in Ditchingham whose grandfathers may have been living in 1738, yet I never heard from them any tale of a vineyard on the Bath Hills. But this proves nothing."
Of course it proves nothing. Rural tradition commemorates the oddest things and omits the oddest things. It is past all calculation. The picture, a very quaint print, may suggest the vines. I should be sorry to say for certain to which part of it Mr. Haggard refers; it suggests swans and a wherry on the Waveney, a sportsman shooting at four-footed game, presumably stags (or perhaps it is a shepherd with a crook), a coach-and-four, and, I think, a quintain in the foreground; but Mr. Haggard says, "Pray observe the double gallows," as to which I say that there are riders close by, one of whom looks as if he had just run a course, and that the artist, if he desired to suggest double gallows, would probably have supplied them with their appropriate pendants. A little earlier Mr. Haggard cites clear evidence that a vineyard existed in Bungay in the time of the Bigods, who dominated Bungay, and continues: "Often have I wondered what kind of wine they made at this vineyard and who was bold enough to drink it; but since I have heard that some enterprising person has taken to the cultivation of the grape in Wales with such success that—so says the wondrous tale—he sells his home-made champagne at 84s. the dozen, it has occurred to me that the Bigods knew more than we imagine about the possibilities of viticulture in England. Or it may chance that the climate was more genial in those days, although this is very doubtful."
Is Mr. Haggard poking fun, or is it possible that he does not know the facts? The "enterprising person in Wales" was the late Marquess of Bute. The vineyard was, and is, at Castell Coch in South Wales, and, although the price was hardly a market price, and the position of the grower was not without its influence upon it, the wine was, and I expect still is, sound wine. Grapes good enough to make fair wine can be grown in the open in England, were grown, certainly until quite recently, in Swan Walk, Chelsea, and doubtless would grow, quite well, on a slope in Southern Norfolk, having such an aspect as the good Mr. King described. There is no reason to assume a deteriorated climate, no reason to doubt (in the absence of evidence to the contrary in individual cases) that all the "vineyards" to be found in Southern England, for the most part, as at Abingdon, in the vicinity of bygone abbeys, once grew grapes good enough to be trodden in the wine-press. This, however, is not to say that vine-growing, albeit possible, would be profitable in England to-day. It is a great deal cheaper and easier to grow rhubarb, and the wits who are sarcastic at the expense of "gooseberry champagne" would be a great deal nearer to the mark if they followed to their ultimate destination some of the huge crops of rhubarb grown a little further north than East Anglia.
"Bungay has bygone glories of its own. Its name has been supposed to be derived from Bon Gué or Good Ford, but as the town was called Bungay before ever a Norman set foot in England, this interpretation will not hold. More probable is that suggested to me by the Rev. J. Denny Gedge, that the origin of the name may be Bourne-gay or Boundary Ford. Or the prefix 'Bun' may, as he hazards, have been translated from 'placenta,' 'a sacred cake,' indicating, perhaps—but this is my suggestion—that in old times Bungay was the town that pre-eminently 'took the cake.' Mayhap, for in philology anything might chance; but if so, alas! it takes it no longer." For my part, if the reason against Bon Gué be conclusive, it seems to me equally conclusive against Bun (placenta) Gué; and Bun Gué is not merely an anachronism, but very far-fetched at that. If we are to come to funning, the derivation "Bung-ay" may be timidly submitted. "Ay" is just a termination, Danish if you will, as in Billericay, perhaps, and it seems from Mr. Haggard's own showing that "Mr. Bung the Brewer" rules in Bungay. He records (p. 110) that on a certain day in February, 1898, the last two "free houses" in the town were put up to auction, and he records elsewhere that there is a liquor-shop for every hundred of the population.
Bungay Castle, the castle of the Bigods, is quite gone; so is the Benedictine nunnery; so is the industry of giving copper sheathing to the bottoms of ships. But the Bath Hills are still there, and behind them, protected by barbed wire and the natural kindness of Mr. Haggard's heart, is a sanctuary for all wild things. He records also that Chateaubriand, a refugee from the Terror, drifted down to Bungay, where he taught French, was known as M. Shatterbrain, and made love to a sentimental young lady, to whose mother, when she took pity on him and offered to look over his poverty, he was compelled to reply, "Hélas! Madame, je suis désolé; mais je suis marié." In fact, Bungay is really a very interesting place to linger at in the spirit; but here we must go on to Barsham and Beccles, as, in the flesh, we did immediately and agreeably.
Spirits rose as we drew near to Beccles, noting on the way a curiously attractive church and parsonage on the left, and that, seen by the light of a strong sun sinking low in the west, the church seemed to have a thatched roof. That light, however, is exceeding deceptive. So, since thatched churches are unusual, to say the least of it, and I can find no allusion to thatched churches in Norfolk, I am content to believe this was a case of optical illusion. The two structures were of a rare charm in that golden glow, notwithstanding, and the probability is that they were at Barsham. Is this word "probability" too audacious? At least, it is candid and prudent. Motorists know full well that too many halts—and goodness knows we had stopped often enough that day—are a weariness of the flesh; that it is not practicable to consult a large scale map en voyage; that one must often be contented to think and to say, "That is a sweetly pretty place" (or a fine hall, or a striking church, as the case may be); "I wonder what it is," and to try to locate it afterwards. One must often be in the position of a visitor to a garden of roses, yet uncertain, rosarian although he may be, as to the exact name of this or that rose. It does not really matter. The rose is beautiful. The fatal error is to give it a name when one is in doubt. In the same way it would be suicidal to say that this pretty place was Barsham, because it may not have been, though Barsham is quite close in any case; and it has a round tower to its church, which seems to be imprinted on my memory in this instance. If Barsham it was, then the parsonage is a rectory, and it was the birthplace of Nelson's mother, Caroline Suckling, a daughter of a very famous Norfolk House.
Now the wide valley of the Waveney came again into full view on the left, a glorious prospect, and Beccles faced us. Approached from the westward on a glorious April afternoon, Beccles produced an impression absolutely and completely opposite to that which it left in January when we came to it from the southward in dull and chilly air. Shall an apology be tendered for the first mention of Beccles in these pages? Shall it be made needless by ruthless excision? Of a surety neither is the right course to take. The first impression was faithful, and it has been found impossible to convince those who shared it that a good word can be said truthfully for Beccles. The second is faithful also, and both are true. Fortunately it is possible to quote the opinion and the words of one who is a master of descriptive English. First of the view from the Bungay vineyard Mr. Rider Haggard says: "I have travelled a great way about the world in my time and studied much scenery, but I do not remember anything more quietly and consistently beautiful than this view over Bungay Common seen from the Earl's vineyard, or, indeed, from any point of vantage on its encircling hills. For the most part of the year the plain below is golden with gorse, but it is not on this alone that the sight depends for beauty, or on the green of the meadows and the winding river edged with lush marshes that in spring are spotted with yellow marigolds and purple with myriads of cuckoo flowers. They all contribute to it, as do the grazing cattle, the gabled distant roofs, and the church spires, but I think that the prospect owes its peculiar charm to the constant changes of light which sweep across its depths. At every season of the year, at every hour of the day, it is beautiful, but always with a different beauty. Of that view I do not think that any lover of Nature could tire, because it is never quite the same."
BECCLES FROM THE WAVENEY
Mr. Haggard, therefore, is clearly not afraid to match Norfolk scenery against any of the restful kind on the face of the globe; but we see soon that even this view of Bungay Common and Waveney is not to his mind the best. "Had the builders of this house where I write (Ditchingham House), for instance, chosen to place it four hundred yards further back, as they might very easily have done, it would have commanded what I believe to be the finest view in Norfolk, since from that spot the eye travels not only over the expanse of Bungay Common and its opposing slopes, but down the valley of the Waveney to Beccles town and tower. But it would seem that in the time of the Georges the people who troubled their heads about beautiful prospects were not many. The country was lonely then, and the neighbourhood of the Norwich road had more attractions than any view. Along that road passed the coaches, bringing a breath of the outer world into the quiet village, and the last news of the wars; also, did any member of the household propose to travel by them, it was easy for the men-servants to wheel his luggage in a barrow to the gate."
For my own part I deprecate comparisons of scenery, for which there appears to be no true basis, believing that the real secret of its enjoyment is to possess a catholic taste and a receptive mind in these matters. It is enough to say, and to feel, that the scenery of these parts is exceeding lovely, that the distant view of Beccles and its church, on that proud brow dominating the placid plain of marsh and meadow and river is, in a single word, divine, and that Mr. Haggard has analysed the charms of all this landscape with Pre-Raphaelite accuracy. To admire, to be compelled to understand why one admires, are pleasant and profitable. To institute comparisons is unsatisfying and unnecessary.
From Beccles to Lowestoft is any easy run which we have taken before. This time we saw the eastern end of Oulton Broad more plainly than the last. It seemed tripper-haunted and bar-tainted, and it had the effect of rather setting us against the Broads. The preliminary prejudice was strengthened somewhat by reference to Mr. Walter Rye. "It is painful for one who has known and loved the Broads as long as I have, in common honesty, to say that their charms have been grossly exaggerated of late. To read some of the word-painting about them you would think that you had only to leave Yarmouth and sail up the North River to get at once into a paradise of ferns, flowers and fish, where you could not fail to fill your basket or bag; or to see, at all events, myriads of wild birds of the rarest sorts in the air, shoals of fishes in the water, and any quantity of rare water plants on the bank. The first few miles will effectually disillusionize any stranger who has been taking in the Swiss Family Robinson sort of rubbish referred to above, for he will be disgusted with the very muddy flint walls of a tediously winding river dragging itself along through a flat uninteresting marshy country, varied only by drainage mills in various stages of dilapidation, and by telegraph poles. Even when at last Yarmouth Church finally disappears, after having come into view about a dozen times through the windings, and the river wall with its rats and dirt changes into the regular river scenery, he will see nothing particularly pretty." Now Mr. Rye is a Norfolk man pur sang. The name has been known in East Anglia since Eudo de Rye came over with the Conqueror—he was the same Eudo Dapifer, or high steward, whom we met at Colchester. Mr. Rye has Norfolk lore and antiquities at his fingers' ends; he is most clearly and unquestionably a true lover of his native county. This douche of cold water coming so unexpectedly from him, quenched effectually for the moment the flickering flame of a desire to stretch a point by including a run or two on the Broads in a motor-boat among the little adventures legitimately within the scope of my title. But the flame of desire rose again later, especially when the car hove in sight of a better Broad than at Oulton, and with the view of that sheet of water came the thought that, luckily, the tastes of men are not identical—else every pleasure would be so crowded as to be deprived of most of its joy, and that many men have waxed exceeding rapturous over the very Broads of which Mr. Rye has not a good word to say. So later a little—not so much as I could wish—is said about this strange and peculiar district.
Now we were in Lowestoft a second time, in beautiful weather too, and we went slowly up all sorts of streets and a parade, and even on to some sand hills in order to see Lowestoft from a good many points of view. The result, it must be confessed, was the very opposite to a desire to revisit Lowestoft, especially South Lowestoft. True it was before the season, and Lowestoft, which lives on herrings and holiday-keepers, exporting the first and importing the second, doubtless presents a scene more gay when the esplanade is crowded with girls in pretty frocks and men in clean flannels, when the really splendid sands are thronged with happy children. Still most of the houses are so painfully modern and, so to speak, raw, most of them also built for so manifest a purpose that the legends "Furnished Lodgings," or "Apartments," or "Board and Residence," are surely superfluous, that it fails to attract a person of only moderately fastidious taste.
There were scores of houses there recalling my one and only experience of a boarding-house. In each of these houses I could conjure up the replica of that terrible evening meal of many years ago; could see the housewife, obese but anxious, cringing to the guests, but with the eye of a dragon for the delinquencies of the harassed handmaid; the daughters, in crushed white frocks and cheap bangles, pertly and persistently garrulous; the all too affable and white-bearded father of the family, assuming the airs of an open-handed host when all the time his wife was wondering secretly whether the flabby fish would "go round," and I, equally secretly, was trying to guess whether the white-bearded old loafer with the generous air, but the niggardly carving-knife, had ever tried to do any honest work in his life.
Leaving Lowestoft for Yarmouth by the same road as before, we felt a sense of relief and with it a glorious consciousness of well-being. An hour or two of daylight still remained; we had been so long without stopping, otherwise than by our own will, that we felt as if we could go on for ever; the sky was clear, and we had not had enough, nor half enough, of travelling. A moon was due early that evening. It was even visible in the sky already, giving faint white promise of silvern glory to come. We had not ordered beds for the night anywhere. How would it be to skip afternoon tea, push on through Yarmouth for Norwich, dine there at the "Maid's Head," and consult our inclination as to proceeding by moonlight, perhaps to Wells, perhaps even to Lynn? It would, indeed, be very well, and in this mood we glided easily on to Yarmouth. This ancient capital of the herring-trade pleased us more, as we poked our noses and the bonnet of our car into various byways, than we had been pleased at Lowestoft. (These "we's," by the way, represent no editorial assumption, no false modesty about speaking in the first person, but simply a fourfold consensus of opinion.) Yarmouth pleased the more because it was and is manifestly a port. The smell of the herring is there, of course; the serried rows of steam-trawlers along the quay suggest that this herring fishery is a long way from being so picturesque a business as it was. Still Yarmouth strikes one as an honest, workaday place doing a good trade, and not at all ashamed of it. Yarmouth combined with "Leistocke"—Lowestoft probably—to contribute "1 shippe and one pinnace" to the fleet which defeated the Armada; and surely there is something of an Elizabethan ring about an early acrostic of unknown date, addressed by somebody—the Nymph of Yarmouth, perhaps—to its people:
Y-ou, the inhabitants of Mee, [faire towne]
A-dorned with riches both from sea and land,
R-eason you have on knees for to fall downe
M-agnifying God, for all comes from his hand,
O-ver you all his works and mercies are,
U-nto his children doth he give to eate
T-he fyshe in sea, whatever the land doth beare,
H-ym therefore do yee praise as is right meete.
This is culled from the invaluable Norfolk and Norwich Notes and Queries, as is the following string of verses by Taylor, "the Water Poet"—the description is given just shortly like this, as one might say "Shakespere, the dramatist"—who visited the town in 1622 and found it:
A towne well fortifide
Well-governed, with all nature's wants supplied;
The situation in a wholesome ayre,
The building (for the most part) sumptuous and fayre,
The people content, and industrious, and
With labour makes the sea enrich the land.
A sound account of Yarmouth this is, and, by the quality of the versification, an ample justification for those persons who hear now for the first time of "Taylor, the Water Poet," and feel no inclination to ransack the British Museum for further examples of his poesy.
Hard by is Caister-by-Yarmouth, formerly supposed to have been a Roman fortress, but on quite insufficient evidence. At best, according to Mr. Haverfield, it was never more than a Roman village; and Mr. Haverfield knows. That red-brick tower of Caister Castle, however, reminds us of the Paston Letters, already mentioned and one of the most ancient collections of private letters ever given to the public to be a mirror of life in the days of long ago. The castle was built by "that renowned knight and valiant soldier" Sir John Falstolf, who died in 1459. Sir John was not only a hard fighter, but also clearly a man of extended property. He had land so far off as Dedham, close to the Suffolk boundary of Essex, the Dedham that Constable painted, and we find him complaining once, "Item, Sir John Buck parson of Stratford fished my stanks at Dedham and helped to break my dam, destroyed my new mill and was always against me at Dedham." This complaint was made to John Paston, afterwards Sir John Paston, then Sir John Falstolf's steward, agent as we should say now, and residing in his employer's castle. The employer died; the agent, upon what title the letters do not make it quite clear, continued to hold the castle, on which his wife Dame Paston lived while he followed the practice of the law in London even to the judicial bench. Something has been said of these letters before, but there are points to be added.
YARMOUTH FROM BREYDON
The early-printed volumes, stately and calf-bound, are a luxury to read, and in spite of Sir John Fenn's omissions they contain all manner of curiosities, the best of them perhaps being a letter written by one of the young Pastons in 1467, from Eton, where he was at school. In it he shows anxiety about a consignment of figs and raisins, promised but not arrived, discusses the fortune of a young lady recently met whom he thinks of marrying, and says to his brother: "And as for hyr bewte juge you that when ye see hyr yf so be that ye take ye laubore and specialy beolde hyr handys for and if it be as is tolde me sche is dysposyd to be thyke." (Here, by the way, is an example of Sir John Fenn's weakness as an editor, since, the original sentence being innocent of stops save at the end, he places a comma after "hands," and after "be" and another after "me," thus making his own unnecessary translation far more obscure than the original.) It is worth while to remember that Eton College had at this time been open for twenty-five years only, was in fact quite a new school, and that the headmaster was William Barber.
It was during this run by a circuitous route from Caister-by-Yarmouth to Acle and Norwich, and when the wide sheet of Filby Broad smiled on either hand, that the feeling of opposition to Mr. Rye's view of the Broads grew strong. That magnificent stretch of water appealed with a strength almost irresistible to one for whom sailing was, before motoring came into existence, the most perfect of pleasures; and although circumstances, and circumstances only, tendered resistance possible, it seems but right to glance at the Broads, to say what they and the country around them are like, and how, in the opinion of one fairly well versed in watermanship, they might best be enjoyed. There is a stock delimitation of the Broad District. Draw a line from Happisburgh to Norwich, another line from Lowestoft to Norwich, and the rough triangle formed by those lines and the sea shall be the Broads District. Really the southern side of the triangle is drawn much too low on the map. Except Oulton Broad and Lake Lothing, which are close to Lowestoft, and also a long way from the other Broads, all the Broads, including Breydon Water, would be included in a triangle having a line from Norwich to Gorleston for its southern boundary. They are Filby, Ormsby, Burgh, and Rollesby, all connected and covering no less than six hundred acres between them; Hickling, Heigham, Horsey, and Marlham Broads, Hickling the finest of them all; and Irstead and Barton; and each group is approached by its own river. Now, travel by motor-car is not recommended in this district, for it is much too flat to be enjoyable. Since that is not recommended, nothing is said about the churches, although they are of some interest; for so long as men and women remain what they are, they will not stop to study relics of antiquity, unless they are very exceptional indeed, when travelling by boat. Nor are they in the least more likely to linger in this way when voyaging by motor-boat than when using a sailing-boat. But shall we, voyaging in the spirit, use either sailing-boat or motor-boat, in the ordinary acceptation of the latter term. In truth, neither is suggested, but rather a compromise. Candour compels the admission that, knowing by sight, and in some cases from personal experience, most of the types of motor-boat built in Great Britain, I cannot recall one of them which, being roomy enough for comfort, would not draw too much water to be serviceable. In fact, if one could rely on the wind, a sailing vessel of one of the types which have been evolved in the district to meet its needs would really be preferable. Elsewhere than in these pages I should certainly take it, and enjoy it vastly. But what I might take in these pages, and what would be much better than either, would be one of those big flat-bottomed sailing craft with auxiliary motor-engines, of which one may see some at English exhibitions, but many more at the annual exhibition in Paris. With them you can really sail, when there is a wind; and, without a breeze, you are independent. As for the joy of it, so long as there is wind to fill the sails, the mere act of dashing through the water and gliding over it, the very sound of the water, the sense of absolute control that comes to him who holds the tiller and trims the sails to meet every need, are enough, without worrying over scenery. Moreover, the wide flatness of the Broads District, the rare buildings rising as from a lake, have a special charm of their own. As for the sport, from all that I can learn it is largely a thing of the past so far as duck and wildfowl are concerned. All the same, it is a bad mistake to omit the Broads, and one which, experto crede, the tourist in East Anglia regrets deeply when it is irretrievable. However, there is no doubt I made it, but happily hardly less doubt that, if I had not made it, the results could hardly have been relevant.
On, then, we went to Norwich by way of Caister, not as before through Acle, and dined at the "Maid's Head," as on our last visit, and admired the ancient hotel and the red waistcoat of the head waiter as much as ever; but afterwards, instead of seeing something of the famous city by night, we pushed on towards Cromer on the high road by moonlight. That is not the best way to see the country of course, and it would be sheer hypocrisy (which happens to be unnecessary) to say anything in detail of the normal aspect of the places passed, or of their associations if they had any. Still, of all kinds of travelling yet tried by me, it was emphatically the most delightful. The air was very transparent and not too cool, the moon bathed the landscape, which was fairly free from hills, there was little traffic on the roads save here and there a farmer jogging home in his dog-cart from Norwich market, the acetylene lamps were doing their duty nobly (which is by no means always their custom), we felt as if we should like to go on all night. At Cromer certainly we would not stop. We would make the coast there and skirt the sea by moonlight, certainly so far as Wells-next-Sea, possibly so far as Hunstanton. All things went merrily as marriage bells, the car sped smoothly as a soaring albatross, silently as death itself. But stay, what was that? A sharp little report, like the crack of a miniature rifle, was heard from below. It was not a tire again; that was sure; we knew by heart every noise that a failing tire could make. A little farther the car went quite well—Cromer was now some five miles distant—and then the noises began again in quick and staccato succession. In another environment they might have reminded us of a feu de joie; to our present predicament no words could have been more completely inappropriate. What was the trouble? Was it something wrong with the ignition? "No," said our philosophic friend at the wheel, "it is not ignition. There is one of the blessings of experience. A little time ago I should have wasted time in fiddling with the ignition; now I know it is not that; and I know there is nothing to be done to-night. There is no strainer fixed to the tank in this car; the good man who refilled for us at Norwich used no strainer; and some grit has got into the petrol. To find it I must first put out all lights and then go right back, piece by piece, from the carburettor backwards, until I can discover the obstacle. That is impossible in the dark. We must bear the noise and push on, if we can, to the hotel at Cromer. Possibly the foreign matter, whatever it is, may have dissolved by the morning." So, seeing from excellent example, that misfortune faced with a smile loses three-quarters of its annoyance, we went on, at quite a good pace too, sometimes silently for a hundred yards, sometimes with loud reports as of a gun at the covert side, sometimes with spluttering as of boys' crackers on the 5th of November. But we laughed at them all and won our way to Cromer, won our way too up the steep and sinuous hill that leads to the Links Hotel. There we had good fortune indeed. The hotel had been opened that day only after the winter of sleep and desolation; a huge fire roared in the ample hall; belated guests were none the less welcome in that, so far as we could see, there were but two other guests, golfers both, in that vast hotel. Had we come a night earlier our fate had been bad indeed. The hotel, judged by bed and breakfast, seemed to me of the first order of merit. The charges, compared with those of the "Angel" at Bury, seemed high. Still, it was more "replete with every modern luxury" than the "Angel"; it possessed bathrooms, for example, which are indispensable to the motorist, and it was a very present help in trouble. Such was our view the next morning, when the inevitable bill, not a very big one after all, having regard to the class of the hotel, was presented.
Other things also came to mind that following morning, a morning of gauzy mist not obscuring the view, even lending enchantment to some of it, and promising a fine day. Some of them were obvious. The position of the hotel, looking down from a commanding height on town and sea, was perfect for prospect and for bracing air; the golf-links, close by, were an undeniable attraction to the large army of men and women who have yielded to the seductions of that most fascinating game. It would have been unreasonable to expect low charges; but all the same, the contrast between this bill and that paid at Bury was a little stronger than it ought to be in a well-regulated country. Other things were not so immediately obvious, since for some it was the wrong season, and others were hidden in pleasant and well-remembered books. We were in the heart of Poppyland, concerning which Mr. Clement Scott and others raved, but it was too soon for the poppies—poor Dan Leno's "Red, Red, Poppies," now to be heard only on the gramophone—to be on view. It was, however, not difficult to conjure them up in imagination, having seen them before all over those sandy uplands in the Runton direction. They are very pretty beyond doubt; they add glorious lakes of colour to a rather monotonous landscape, but they mean poor and sandy land, and that (although it does not matter to the motorist, unless he happens to own some of it, and to be unable to let it for building) spells dust in dry weather, and lots of it too.
CHURCH STREET, CROMER
Is Cromer a choiceworthy place in which to spend a summer holiday? The answer, not perhaps the answer which appears at first to be given, lies in or under this extract from The Gurneys of Earlham. Mr. Hare began by saying, "A picture of the summer family life at Cromer, much like that of the present day, is given in the following letter." It is one from Richenda Gurney to Elizabeth Fry—the Elizabeth Fry, good angel of gloomy Newgate Prison, of course.
"Cromer, September 8, 1803.—Our party is now complete, as John continues with us, and the Buxtons arrived yesterday; it was extremely pleasant to us, seeing them both again, particularly Fowell; their being here will add very much to our pleasure, as there is a suitability between us and the Buxtons which always makes it pleasant for us to be together. Our time here is spent in a way that exactly suits the place and the people. All are left in perfect liberty to do as they like all day, or to form any engagement. Yet the party is so connected that hardly a day passes but some plan is fixed for us all to meet. When all are met it is an uncommonly pretty sight, such a number of young women, and so many, if not pretty, very nice-looking. I wish thee could have seen us the other afternoon. Sally gave a grand entertainment at the Hall, where everybody met—the ladies almost all dressed in white gowns and blue sashes, with nothing on their heads. After dinner we all stood on a wall, eighteen of us, and it was really one of the prettiest sights I ever saw.
"To give thee an idea how we are going on, I will tell thee how we generally pass the day. The weather since we came has on the whole been very fine; so imagine us before breakfast, with our troutbecks [hats] on and coloured gowns, running in all directions on the sands, jetty, etc. After breakfast we receive callers from the other houses, and fix with them the plans for the day; after this, we now and then get an hour's quiet for reading and writing, though my mind has been so much taken up with other things, that I have found it almost impossible to apply to anything seriously. At eleven we go down in numbers to bathe and enjoy the sands, which about that time look beautiful: most of our party and the rest of the Cromer party come down, and bring a number of different carriages, which have a very pretty effect. After bathing, we either ride on horseback or take some pleasant excursion or other. I never remember enjoying the sea so much, and never liked Cromer a quarter so well. Some of us continually dine out, whilst the others receive company at home.... John has been a great addition to our party. I hope he has enjoyed himself; we have had two or three most merry days since he came. The day before yesterday we spent at Sherringham, wandering about the woods and sketching all the morning. Every one met at a beautiful spot for dinner, with three knives and forks and two or three plates between twenty-six people. All manner of games took place after dinner, which John completely entered into and seemed to enjoy as much as any of the party. We completed our day by a delightful musical evening. Miss Gordon, our old Cromer friend, came to tea: she played and sang to us all the evening in a wonderful style. John goes away on Sunday; he stays over to-night to be at a dance which some very agreeable people who are at Cromer—Mr. and Mrs. Windham—are going to give, and which, I think, must be very pleasant."
"Could anything be more simply delightful? What can the man mean by hinting that the answer to the question whether Cromer is a choiceworthy place for a summer holiday is not plainly to be read on the face of this artless letter?" Such, it is easy to imagine, would be the question asked if the early Victorian practice continued, if somebody read these pages aloud, with pauses for comment and criticism, while ladies of various ages embroidered or contrived trousers for unwilling heathens to wear as a cover for their natural nakedness and as a testimony of recently acquired Christianity. My dear Madam, as Thackeray might have said, pause for a moment and reflect. Are you a Gurney, a Fry, a Buxton? Do you bear any of the other names, perfectly well known, which are a password to this most admirable and worthy society? Read also what Mr. Walter Rye has to say on the same topic. Pray note that the letter is of 1803, but that Mr. Hare's book, published in 1895, says that the picture of 1803 would serve very well for a picture of the present day. Have you ever tried, as a stranger, a summer holiday at a seaside place which has been frequented by the same families for a few years, let alone a place to which the same families have resorted for generations, as is the case at Cromer and in its vicinity? Or, again, have you ever, being a member of such a society, known what it is to see new families discover the oasis which seemed your very own, and what have been your feelings towards those new families? Have you not in the first case felt uncomfortable, a goat among sheep, in the second case perceived at once that the new-comers were of goat-like nature? In all this vivid letter there are but two allusions to persons outside the charmed circle, Miss Gordon and the Windhams. Miss Gordon was clearly a Cromer institution, and it is probable to the verge of certainty, if only from the name, that the Windhams were a Norfolk family. Less than ten years before "William Windham, the statesman and darling of the county" had distinguished himself, when stoned during an election at Norwich, by jumping out of his carriage and collaring his assailant. He was the same William Windham who quelled a mutiny in the local militia by "seizing the leader and thrashing two of his followers." Such conduct was not, perhaps, entirely to the mind of the Gurneys and their friends, but, for all that, the chances are that this Mr. and Mrs. Windham were kinsfolk of one who was no man of peace at any price.
Cromer seems to me on a priori grounds and, if the truth may be told, "from information received" also, to be entirely the place for the members of a justly respected circle, whose title to it is clear and not to be begrudged, but a place in which a stranger to that circle is, as the common saying goes, "out of it." It is emphatically a good place for a golfer; but otherwise, all along this piece of the coast, there is precious little for the ordinary man or woman to do. There is the sea of course, but the coastline is too regular and the sea too open to provide that variety of scenery which gives to little pleasure cruises their chief pleasure. Also, of course, there are the roads, upon which the motorist may take his pleasure, and some of them pass through or near places attractive in the present as they were in the past, nay, even more attractive, since to see them stir up the memories of the past. But two things must be said. A seaside place, as a centre for motoring, walking or bicycling, is by its very essence one-sided or even less. Lay a pen across the map horizontally at Cromer, and it is plain that there is no way for the motorist towards more than half the points of the compass. As for the coast scenery, of which we shall shortly take a considerable sample, it is full of individual character, the kind of scenery one may visit with pleasure once or twice or even three times, but, to a man not of Norfolk blood, it seems no more than that. Such, certainly, is the final impression left by the coast drive to the west of Cromer, and in Cromer itself are far too many new houses. To the eastward, especially if the coast be left behind, the scenery is better, possessed of, if it may be so put, more abiding charm. To the westward it is more strange, weird and individual than beautiful, and its weirdness is of the kind inspiring to melancholy, not to awe. This summary of opinion, however, is in the nature of an anticipation. It shall be justified piecemeal so soon as we are fairly under way so that a new chapter can be begun.
Let this chapter close with the last unhappy episode in a supremely happy tour, with which episode it would be discordant to mix the undiluted pleasure of the next chapter. We started, for us, rather early; that is to say we breakfasted at half-past seven and left the hotel door slightly after eight. All down the zigzag hill into the town the machinery said nothing at all. There was no reason why it should make any demonstration, since it had no work to do. Once called upon to work, however, the car soon began to crackle and to splutter again. There was no room for doubt what was the matter. Foreign matter had found its way into the petrol tank and beyond; and it was hard stuff, genuine grit, undissolved by a night's soaking. Whether the ostler at the "Maid's Head" or he of Bury St. Edmunds was to blame, and in justice to the former it must be said that it might have been either, the nuisance was beyond question. It was Sunday morning, too; it was hardly likely that the repair shops would be of any assistance, at any rate so early in the morning, and, empty as the streets were then, it would not have been seemly to begin in them, at about the hour of the earliest service, an operation which might very likely consume an hour or more. So up the hill on the far side of the town we crawled—for Cromer lies in the hollow of a cup—snorting and grunting not a little, in sickly fashion and with much trouble, as the Latin exercises used to put it, and out on to the sandy road, leading between sandy and wind-swept fields, towards Runton.
There, thanking our stars that few wayfarers were astir, we stopped, and Mr. Johnson, cheerfully remarking that those who could be of no help, because there is only room for one big man face upwards under a car, had better go for a little walk and see some of the country, addressed himself with a smile and a half-groan to his odious task with its infinite possibilities in the way of black and viscous lubricant dropping into his hair or on to his face. In this posture I left him, his legs alone visible, for a little tour of inspection; but there was no temptation to prolong it.
A walk of a hundred yards or two along a bank, covered sparsely with harsh and wiry grass, and dividing two fields, both equally poverty-stricken, brought me to the crumbling edge of a sandy cliff, not high enough to impose by its grandeur, not rugged enough to please by its outline. Below was a beach of sand, beyond that the smooth, grey, hazy sea with not a vessel of any kind visible on its sluggish surface. To the westward was Runton, a conglomeration of commonplace brick houses, glaringly new, obviously intended for lodgings. A windmill and its house were the only buildings in any way calculated to give satisfaction to the eye. From there it roved on to undulating hills, probably of sand, as indeed was everything else except the raw houses of Runton. Rambling, in this Poppy Land sans poppies, seemed weary, flat, stale and unprofitable. A return to the car revealed Mr. Johnson still in the back position, as riflemen say, and sundry stray bits of the car and tools lying on the road by his side. A glance at him, obtained by crouching, showed him to be much hotter, much dirtier than before, more smilingly determined than ever, if possible, to make nothing of his personal trouble. He was not so much a good man fighting against adversity as a master of science wrestling with a problem he knew that he could solve in time: and solve it with triumph he did. A few minutes more and he half wriggled half rolled into the open road, dusty, but jubilant, holding a little piece of pipe some five inches long and of infinitesimal bore in his hand. "Here is the little brute," he said, with a gentle smile—and then made his one mistake of the day, and it cost him dear. Just touching one end of the pipe with his lips, and holding his hollowed palm by the other end, he blew one breath. Out came the obstruction, hardly bigger than a snapdragon seed, surely the tiniest little imp of a particle that ever hampered the circulation of a mighty machine. The mechanical trouble was over for ever, or at any rate for that expedition. A very few minutes sufficed to prepare the car for the road again, and she accomplished over two hundred miles more that day without, so to speak, turning a hair. So did the man who cured her, because he knew her complaint to a nicety; but he was in my company all that day until seven or eight in the evening and the thoroughly abominable taste of petrol was in his mouth to the end. In fact
You may rinse with raw brandy your mouth if you will,
But the reek of the petrol will cling to it still.
Such is a valuable little piece of experience gained by proxy. The morals are three and obvious. First, every tank or funnel should be fitted with an irremovable strainer. Secondly, if this be not so, superintend refilling yourself and see that a temporary strainer is used. Thirdly, if grit does get into the petrol through omission of these precautions, and blowing a pipe becomes necessary, wrap up the mouth of that pipe with care, or preferably get somebody else, and best of all an idle bystander, to do the blowing for you. For this service, if rendered by a boy, a shilling is a sufficient recompense, and you may depart at your leisure; but if it be done by a man, especially if he be large and rough, give him half a crown, and stand not on the order of your going.
BLAKENEY—A CHARACTERISTIC LANDSCAPE