In any case, the curtain has long since been rung down upon the Romance of the Road. If this were the place to do it, that romance might be recounted at great length; sometimes rising to tragical height, again sinking to comedy or farce. But we must take our romance as it comes, and, reading as we run, be content to act a vicarious part in the long story. And we may well be so content, for to have essayed the journey in days of old often meant a "speaking with strangers in the gates" that entailed fighting on unequal terms, with the possibility of a roadside grave and the tolerable certainty of being robbed of anything and everything worth the taking.
Nowadays, the trim suburbs of the towns stretch out on either side along the old highway and join hands with the villages; so that when travellers of the speedier sort spurn the dust from their flying wheels, they think the country is becoming one vast town, and are depressed and regretful accordingly. But when the road was the sole means of travelling and the towns were still girdled by their walls and entered only by fortified gates, the wayfarer welcomed the sight of a house in the lonely country between town and village. Even to the rich these perils came home, and in the more lawless times they were beset with troubles of their own.
Royal progresses were not infrequent along the Norwich Road, and they have elsewhere been duly chronicled, but they are things apart and give no glimpse of old wayfaring life. If we are at all in the way of conjuring up that old-time traffic, we must certainly not forget the odd processions that trailed their slow length after my lord and my lady, changing residence from one castle or manor-house to another. My Lord Duke of Norfolk in Elizabeth's time had an exquisite palace, of which Macaulay has told us, in Norwich, and the Earls of Oxford no doubt kept great state in their castle at Hedingham, but, for all their magnificence, they were obliged to take many of their household goods with them when flitting from place to place; for the very excellent reason that they did not, certainly up to less than three hundred years ago, possess more than one fully-equipped establishment. When the nobility of old left one of their manor-houses for another they commonly took their bedding and a good deal of their furniture with them. In even more remote days they removed the glass from their windows as well, and stored it carefully away until their return. That, of course, was a custom of very long ago, when even the most luxurious were content with—or, at any-rate, had to endure—things which nowadays would drive the inmates of a casual ward to rebellion; but, even when the Stuarts reigned, the great ones of the land moved from home to home with long baggage-trains and with their entire staff of domestics. No board-wages, then! The whole establishment took the road, down to the scullery-maids and the hangers-on of the kitchen who took charge of the domestic pots and pans. My lord's pages and the dignitaries of his household formed the advance-guard; the lowest in the scale, who travelled with the culinary utensils and even took the coals with them, were, appropriately enough, the "black guard." The black guard were probably a very rough lot indeed, at odds with soap and water, and on every count deserving of their name, which has in the course of centuries obtained a different application, as a term of reproach to individuals of moral rather than physical uncleanliness.
Turning from general conditions of travelling to particular travellers, there comes tripping along the road an antic fellow, one Will Kemp, who danced from London to Norwich in the year 1600; a frolic he undertook for a wager, afterwards writing and publishing a book about it, which he called Kemp's Nine Days' Wonder. Will Kemp was accompanied by a drummer whose play upon parchment helped to sustain his flagging energies as he skipped it to Widford and thence by a route of his own through Braintree to Norwich.
Sprightly, irresponsible Kemp, cracking weak jokes and playing the fool, is succeeded in the memories of the road, after an interval of some eighty years, by a very grave and responsible figure indeed; no less an one than that of King William the Third, on his frequent journeys between his dear Holland and his little-loved Kingdom of England. Burdened with the care of an alien realm, that saturnine little figure with the hooked nose was a familiar sight at Kelvedon, where, travelling to and from Harwich, he was wont to stay at the "Angel" inn, which still confronts the wayfarer on entering the village from London. When the "little gentleman in black" had done his work and King William of blessed Protestant memory was no more, the Norwich Road, so far as Colchester, was still graced with Royal travellers, for, with the coming of the Hanoverians, Harwich became more than ever a favourite port of entry and departure, and the choleric early Georges knew this Essex landscape well. This way, too, came the Schwellenburgs, the Keilmanseggs and the other vulgar and grotesque figures of that grotesque and vulgar Court.
Among these figures comes that of the Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, arrived for the first time in England, in 1761, to marry George the Third. One German princess is very like another in the pages of history, and the likeness remains even when they become queens, so that it is not a little difficult to disentangle a Caroline from a Charlotte. Their virtues are of the same drab domestic order, and their faces partake of the common fund of unilluminated dulness distributed between the Mecklenburg-Strelitzes, the Sonderburg-Augustenburgs, and the dozens of other twopenny-halfpenny principalities made familiar by German princely marriages and intermarryings. On their mere merits, these personages would find no place here, though they travelled all their lives up and down the road; but in the circumstances of this particular Princess Charlotte's journey there are some incidents worth mentioning. She landed at Harwich, and comes into our road at Colchester, September 7, 1761. At Colchester she was presented with a box of eringo-root, the famous local production highly valued for the cure of pulmonary diseases, prepared from the root of the sea holly. Graciously receiving this in a box "parfumed and guilt," her carriage swept on towards Witham, where she stayed the night at a seat then owned by Lord Abercorn, supping with open doors so that all who would might gaze upon their future Queen. Next day the journey to London was resumed. The King's coach was in readiness at Romford, and into it she changed. At Mile End a squadron of Life Guards was in waiting as an escort, and from that point the procession was viewed by thousands. But by this time the September day was closing. The Duchess of Hamilton, who accompanied the Princess, looked at her watch. "We shall hardly have time to dress for the wedding," she said.
"The wedding?"
"Yes, madam; it is to be at twelve."
On that the Princess fainted, as well she might. It really took place at 9 p.m., instead of three hours later. The King, it is upon record, was a little disappointed at the first sight of his bride; but that has generally been the way with our Royal marriages. The eldest son of this amiable pair, George the Fourth, similarly saw his bride for the first time practically on the steps of the altar, and his disappointment was keen. "No sooner," we read, "had he approached her than, as if to subdue the qualms of irrepressible disgust, he desired the dignified envoy to bring him a glass of brandy." The Princess, we are told, "expressed surprise," which statement requires no credulity for belief. Henry the Eighth's disappointment when he saw Anne of Cleves was reflected in the words in which he likened her to a "Flanders mare."
Two years later, in 1763, we find Dr Johnson and his inevitable Boswell journeying down the road; Boswell on his way to Harwich for Utrecht, and the Doctor good-naturedly accompanying him as far as that seaport. They set out by coach on the 5th of August, early in the morning; among their fellow-travellers a fat, elderly gentlewoman and a young Dutchman, both inclined to conversation. Dining at an inn on the way, the lady remarked that she had done her best to educate her children, and particularly that she never suffered them to be a moment idle.