In the early part of the present century Miss Berry, on returning from one of her Continental trips, paid Ipswich a visit, having landed at Southwold. ‘Appearance of Ipswich very pretty in descending towards it,’ is the entry in her diary. About the same time Bishop Bathurst made his visitation tour, and he writes to one of his lady correspondents: ‘You will be glad that, during the three weeks I passed in Suffolk, I did not meet a single unpleasant man, nor experience a single unpleasant accident.’ With the name of the Suffolk hero Captain Broke, of the Shannon. (I can well remember the Shannon coach—which ran from Yoxford to London—the only day-coach we had at that time), Ipswich is inseparably connected. He was born at Broke Hall, just by, and there spent the later years of his life. Another of our naval heroes, Admiral Vernon, the victor of Porto Bello, resided in the same vicinity. At one time there seems to have been an attempt to connect Ipswich with the Iron Duke. In the memoir of Admiral Broke we have more than one reference to the Duke’s shooting in that neighbourhood,
and actually it appears that, unknown to himself, he was nominated as a candidate to the office of High Steward. Ipswich, however, preferred a neighbour, in the shape of Sir Robert Harland. At a later day the office was filled by Mr. Charles Austin, the distinguished writer on Jurisprudence.
One of the celebrated noblemen who lived in Ipswich was Lord Chedworth. He wore top-boots, and wore them till they were not fit to be seen. When new boots were sent home he was accustomed to set them on one side, and get his manservant to wear them a short time to prepare them for his own feet. Sometimes the man would tell his lordship that he thought the boots were ready, but his lordship would generally reply, ‘Never mind, William; wear them another week.’ While at Ipswich his lordship was frequently consulted, owing to his legal attainments and well-known generous disposition, by tradesmen and people in indigent circumstances. The applicants were ushered into the library, where, surrounded by books, they found his lordship. The chairs and furniture of the room, like his lordship’s clothes, had not merely seen their best days, but were comparatively worthless, and the old red cloak which invariably enveloped his shoulders made him look
more like a gipsy boy than a peer of the realm. His lordship’s legacies to Ipswich ladies and others, especially of the theatrical profession, were of the most liberal character.
Ipswich in its old days had its share of witches. One of the most notorious of them was Mother Hatheland, who in due course was tried, condemned and executed. From her confession in 1645 it appears ‘the said Mother Hatheland hath been a professor of religion, a constant hearer of the Word for these many years, yet a witch, as she confessed, for the space of nearly twenty years. The devil came to her first between sleeping and waking, and spake to her in a hollow voice, telling her that if she would serve him she would want nothing. After often solicitations she consented to him. Then he stroke his claw (as she confessed) into her hands, and with her blood wrote the covenant.’ Now, as the writer gravely remarks, the subtlety of Satan is to be observed in that he did not press her to deny God and Christ, as he did others, because she was a professor, and he might have lost all his hold by pressing her too far. Satan appears to have provided her with three imps, in the shape of two little dogs and a mole.
As the home of Gainsborough Ipswich has enduring claims on the English nation and on lovers of art and artists everywhere. That must have been a Suffolk man who passed the following criticism on Gainsborough’s celebrated picture of ‘Girl and Pigs,’ of which Sir Joshua Reynolds became the purchaser at one hundred guineas, though the artist asked but sixty: ‘They be deadly like pigs; but who ever saw pigs feeding together, but one on ’em had a foot in the trough?’ Gainsborough had an enthusiastic attachment to music. It was the favourite amusement of his leisure hours, and his love for it induced him to give one or two concerts to his most intimate acquaintances whilst living in Ipswich. He was a member of a musical club, and painted some of the portraits of his brother members in his picture of a choir. Once upon a time, Gainsborough was examined as a witness on a trial respecting the originality of a picture. The barrister on the other side said: ‘I observe you lay great stress on a painter’s eye; what do you mean by that expression?’ ‘A painter’s eye,’ replied Gainsborough, ‘is to him what the lawyer’s eye is to you.’ As a boy at the Grammar School of his native town, it is to be feared he loved to play truant. One day he went out to his
usual sketching haunts to enjoy the nature which he loved heartily, previously presenting to his uncle, who was master of the school, the usual slip of paper, ‘Give Tom a holiday,’ in which his father’s handwriting was so exactly imitated that not the slightest suspicion of the forgery ever entered the mind of the master. Alas! however, the crime was detected, and his terrified parent exclaimed in despair, ‘Tom will one day be hanged.’ When, however, he was informed how the truant schoolboy had employed his truant hours, and the boy’s sketches were laid before him, forgetful of the consequences of forgeries in a commercial society, he declared, with all the pride of a father, ‘Tom will be a genius,’ and he was right.
Worthy Mr. Pickwick seems to have known Ipswich about the same time as myself. ‘In the main street of Ipswich,’ wrote the biographer of that distinguished individual, ‘on the left-hand side of the way, a short distance after you have passed through the open space fronting the Town Hall, stands an inn known far and wide by the appellation of the Great White Horse, rendered the more conspicuous by a stone statue of some rapacious animal, with flowing mane and tail, distantly
resembling an insane carthorse, which is elevated above the principal door. The Great White Horse is famous in the neighbourhood in the same degree as a prize ox, a county paper chronicled turnip, or unwieldy pig, for its enormous size. Never were such labyrinths of uncarpeted passages, such clusters of mouldy, ill-lighted rooms, such huge numbers of small dens for eating or sleeping in, beneath any one roof as are collected together between the four walls of the Great White Horse of Ipswich.’ This was the great hotel of the Ipswich of my youth. As regards hotels, Ipswich has not improved, but in every other way it has much advanced. One of the old inns has been turned into a fine public hall, admirably adapted for concerts and public meetings. The new Town Hall, Corn Exchange, and Post-office are a credit to the town. The same may be said of the new Museum and the Grammar School and the Working Men’s College and that health resort, the Arboretum; while by means of the new dock ships of fifteen hundred tons burden can load and unload. Nowadays everybody says Ipswich is a rising town, and what everyone says must be right. The Ipswich people, at any rate, have firmly got that idea into their heads. Its fathers and founders
built the streets narrow, evidently little anticipating for Ipswich the future it has since achieved. The Ipswich of to-day is laid out on quite a different scale. It has a tram road service evidently much in excess of the present population, and as you wander in the suburbs you come to a sign-post bearing the name of a street in which not even the enterprise of the speculative builder has been able at present to plant a single dwelling. When Ipswich has climbed up its surrounding hills, and taken up all the building sites at present in the market, it will be a goodly and gallant town, almost fitted to invite the temporary residence of holiday-making Londoners who are fond of the water. At all times it is a pretty sail to Harwich and thence to Felixstowe, that quiet watering-place, a seaside residence that has still a pleasant flavour of rusticity about it, with a fine crisp sea-sand floor for a promenade.