All these things, however, are but history in the primitive sense. There is far more pleasure, and perhaps as much profit, in remembering that the editor of the Paston Letters, a mine of information and of interest, was Sir John Fenn, a man of Norwich; that Dean Hook, Mrs. Opie, Hooker the botanist, and Harriet Martineau were born in Norwich. These names, except perhaps that of Fenn, do not stir the imagination much in these days. We are spared from study of Miss Martineau's Political Economy, or of her history; and Sir John Fenn was really, as his comments in the Paston Letters and his omissions from them prove, a dull dog; but what man or woman of literary taste can see, as I did the first day I was in Norwich, the name Rackham on a solicitor's brass plate without remembering that the wayward genius, George Borrow, was clerk to Messrs. Simpson and Rackham, solicitors, or perhaps they were attorneys then, of Norwich, or will omit a pilgrimage to the house, still unchanged, in which he lived in Willow Lane? Then, chiefest jewel of all in the crown of Norwich is the Norwich school of painting that rose in her midst, whereof "old Crome"—his portrait is in the Guildhall—was the father and the founder. His pictures you may study in the National Gallery, but only in Norwich, where he was born and apprenticed to a coach and sign-painter, can you realize his gradual progress, see him in imagination producing signs for the "Lamb" and the "Maid's Head," teaching the Gurney children at Earlham, having George Vincent and James Stark as apprentices, founding, with Ladbroke, R. Dixon, C. Hodgson, and John Thirtle, the first provincial art society, holding in 1805, and subsequent years, considerable exhibitions, joined in 1807 by John Tell Cotman. Only here can one realize the depth and justice of the pride taken by Norwich and Norwich men in their most honourable school of painting, and the eagerness with which the merchant princes of Norwich collect the examples of the school. But there are some in the Guildhall, too, as is but right.
CHAPTER III
Winter. NORWICH TO LONDON BY ROMAN ROAD
Crooked streets of Norwich—An appropriate epitaph—To the county surveyor of Norfolk many thanks—The London Road (Roman)—Roman roads in East Anglia—Mr. Haverfield, the greatest authority on—Some history necessary to understand paucity of Roman remains in East Anglia—The country of the Iceni—Rebellion, brief triumph, and defeat of Iceni under Boadicea—The Iceni wiped out—Their territory minor part of an unimportant province—No military stations—Frontier far to the north—Caistor-by-Norwich not a Roman fortress—Roman roads of East Anglia enumerated—En route—Tempting declivities and annoying cross-roads—Long Stratton—The first round flint tower—Explanation—Scole and county boundary—The "White Hart"—Worse roads in Suffolk—A church with good parvise—Difficulty of identifying villages—Ipswich to Colchester and London—Towns and scenery of route postponed—Reasons—Puzzling darkness—Familiar villages not recognized—Futile demand for tea—Romford discovered—Lights to left front—Had we lost our way?—"Stratford Empire" a sign of hope—Ichthyophagous Whitechapel—Skill in traffic—Journey ended—Observations on winter motoring—On general character of East Anglian scenery.
Norwich was left behind in mingled sorrow and regret the next morning, for, on the one hand, it seemed a sin to leave so fascinating a city practically unexplored, and, on the other, frost had given place to rain, and the rain having abated, the air was mild and warm, so that motoring promised to be entirely pleasant. However, other visits to Norwich were a certainty in the future, so off we went gaily. But, Lord!—to copy Mr. Pepys—were ever streets so strait or so prodigal of angles as these where some folk were hastening to their business at the assizes, while others, on cars garlanded with significant ribbons, were clearly bound for election work in Mid-Norfolk, where it was the polling day. Of a surety a pilot was needed, and we had one; undoubtedly, although Tilney All Saints is far away in Marshland, the epitaph appearing there, and here quoted, must have been written by a Norwich man, and by no other.
This world's a city, full of crooked streets,
Death is the market-place where all men meet;
If life was merchandise, then men could buy,
Rich men would always live, and poor men die.
So hey for Ipswich and London, for at last we are on a straight road, which hardly curves before Ipswich is reached. The air seems soft and balmy after the frost of the day before, and, crowning blessing of all, the surface is good and even. This fact completed and rounded off by plainly legible milestones, seeming to follow one another at intervals satisfactorily short, induce us to pass an informal vote of thanks to the county surveyor of Norfolk, and the heaps of repairing material at regular intervals along the roadside call for observation on more than one ground. They are alternate heaps of blue stone, granite probably, broken into commendably small pieces, and of some whitish matter, probably chalk, doubtless used for binding. This may not be ideal road-making—in fact, it is not, for the smaller the stones are broken, and the less the use of any kind of binding material, the better the road will be in all weathers—but it must be admitted that this road was remarkably good on a morning when fairly heavy rain—it turned out that there had been much more of it further south—had followed shrewdly sharp frost.
For the good surface we had to thank modern times; for a straightness of direction, having the double advantage of saving labour and sometimes rendering a really exhilarating speed prudent, we had to thank the Roman invasion of Britain. It was the first time on this tour when passage through the air gave one that almost undefinable feeling of thrusting through liquid and cool purity—for cold is horrid but coolness is bliss—which is one of the chief pleasures of automobilism. It was also, after we had passed Caistor-by-Norwich, the first time we had been on a road that was once undoubtedly Roman.