Leaving Scoulton Mere behind we were again in a land of flat heaths of wide extent, and of sheltering hedges of dense Scotch fir. It was a country of the most pleasing face but, apart from that, no use for any purposes save those of the motorist and the rabbit-breeder. That it had been well used by the latter evidence was soon apparent on the roadside in the form of a gang of men, with nets, dogs, and ferrets, pursuing their operations on such a scale, and so completely in the open, that they must surely have been authorized rabbit-catchers and not poachers. Still the thought occurred to me that, in bygone days and in far-distant North Wales, we always found from the advertisements that ferrets, who are the poachers' best friends, were to be obtained more easily from Norfolk than from any other part of the country, and that they knew their work very well when they arrived. In fact, there is a huge head of game in Norfolk, and where that state of things exists, there poachers will be. Theirs is a lawless pursuit of course, but Lord! as Mr. Pepys would have said, what good sport it must be "on a shiny night in the season of the year," and what a vast and intimate knowledge of animal and bird life these poachers must possess.
If it was a rabbit-catcher's paradise it was a motorist's paradise also. There was no possible danger to human beings, for, after the rabbit-catchers, there were none; after the fir hedges had been passed the road became an unfenced ribbon of tawny grey running through the bare heath, with no other roads debouching into it, and no cover of any sort for a police trap. There was no reason in life against a good spin at top speed except that superstitious regard for the letter of the law which not one man in a thousand really has. The car simply flew forward; the speed indicator marked 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, and even 50 miles an hour; the road seemed to open wide to our advent, to stretch out its arms, so to speak, to embrace us; the motion, smooth, swifter and swifter still, even as the flight of the albatross that stirreth not his wings, and absolutely free from vibration, was, in a single word, divine. Suddenly, a few miles in front of us, a dusty cloud hove in sight over the road. "There," said my friend, half in jest, but only half—for a motorist's paradise is at its best when solitary—"is one of those beastly motor-cars. What a foul dust it is raising!" So it turned out, on rising and looking back over the cape hood, were we; not that it mattered, for no wayfarers had been passed or, therefore, powdered, for many a short mile—I had written "a long mile" from force of habit, but it would have been inappropriate. Was the other car meeting us or going in the same direction? In the same direction surely, for though the cloud of dust was coming nearer to us, it was not approaching very fast. So we determined to pass as soon as might be, and "giving her a little more gas," we were very soon "on terms," as a racing man would say, with a two-seated car going along the middle of the road at a fair pace. Once, twice, thrice our horn sounded, but the occupants of that car never heard us. At last, keeping well to the off-side of the road, and when our bonnet was level with their rear off-wheel, Mr. Johnson and I gave a simultaneous and stentorian yell; and the two pairs of goggles that were turned upon us, who were then, as nearly always, un-goggled, clearly covered four eyes starting with surprise. It was a lesson to them and to us of the very poor penetrative power of a motor-horn in relation to motor-cars in front, and of the necessity of looking behind you now and again, especially if you be in a noisy car. So that two-seated car was passed as if it had been standing still, and the lot of the dust-recipient, which one or other must needs endure for a while, was transferred from us to them; but they were not called upon to endure it, nor could they have kept it if they had so desired, for any length of time.
So hey for Watton, near which lies Weyland Wood, fondly famous in local story as being the identical wood in which the ill-fated babes in the wood were lost. That is a tradition as to the origin and true locality of which, so far as I know, even the most ardent folk-lorists have not concerned themselves very seriously, and certainly the likeness of sound between "Weyland" and "Wailing" may have caused it to be localized here. As it happens, however, there is a very much simpler explanation of the name of the wood and of the Hundred in which it is situated. Weyland is simply the modern representation of the "Wanelunt" of Domesday, and that again is simply descriptive, like Blacklands in Berks, and the names of scores of Hundreds besides. For "Wanelunt" is just "wan land," and a more wan land than this, from the agricultural point of view, it would be hard to find. Islington in Norfolk may be, in all probability was, the place in which the Bailiff's daughter lived and was beloved by the squire's son, but Weyland Wood cannot detain us. It has no more claim to this particular honour than a hundred other woods in other parts of the kingdom have, except upon an etymological basis, and that has the trifling disadvantage of being quite wrong.
Nor did Watton detain us, any more than it need detain anybody else. Brandon, the next place passed, was renowed in ancient times for its rabbits and its quarries of gunflints, and the "Grime's graves" in the vicinity are said to be interesting earthworks. The glory of the rabbits remains, but the gunflint trade was, of course, vanished. "Murray," it is true, says that flints "are still (1875) exported to Arab tribes round the Mediterranean," but that was more than thirty years ago, and Mr. Rye is, no doubt, correct in saying that the old industry has, naturally enough, died out of late years. But those desert tribes on the African coast of the Mediterranean still use some charmingly antique pieces, and it may be that Brandon flints are still fitted to some of them. They were the same kind of flints which the ancient Briton, or perhaps Neolithic man, used to dig out at Brandon, for excavations some time since revealed a stag's antler, says "Murray," in what was clearly a "working" of a prehistoric flint quarry. Thus much the writer tells us and no more. It would really have been much more interesting to know something of the nature of the antler; but on that point he is silent.
If one were in a hurry, and a train happened to be convenient, it would, for once, be simpler to reach Ely from Brandon by train than by car: for the railway follows the course of the Brandon River across Mow Fen and then cuts straight across Burnt Fen and Middle Fen to Ely. On the other hand the road, dating very likely to a period long before the reclamation of the fens, and keeping to the high ground, turns south-west by south to Mildenhall and then, skirting Mildenhall Fen, nearly due west to Fordham and Soham, and from Soham north-west to Ely: and this is a long way round. Here there would be a first rate opportunity for saying something of the romantic history of the Fens, for it is truly romantic, and of the real glamour which they exercise upon a traveller through their midst. The opportunity is deliberately reserved to a later point for three reasons. First, there is much to be said on other matters; secondly, you really do not see very much of the Fens by this line of route; thirdly, it was found later that the drive from Lynn to Ely is par excellence the occasion upon which the peculiar character of the Fens, their limitless extent, their rich and black soil, and the reflection that all this wealth has been reclaimed from the wasting waters by the industry and the enterprise of man, the very spirit of the Fens in fact, enter into the traveller's soul.
Fordham and even Soham, with its remarkable church and its legends of Canute's passage over the long-vanished mere upon the ice, were passed almost unnoticed, for our eyes were fixed upon the horizon in front in longing for the vision, often seen from a train, of Ely Cathedral rising in beautiful majesty from the centre of the plain-girt isle, once fen-girt, in which the Saxon made almost his last heroic stand against the all-conquering Norman. Truth to tell, for this once only, the train has the advantage of the motor-car in providing a splendid and memorable spectacle. Approaching Ely from Cambridge by rail one sees the cathedral, and the cathedral is the only object that catches the eye, for miles, and miles, and then miles. It is a divine sight, stirring up memories of Canute and of Emma his Queen, of ravaging William the Conqueror (concerning whom the Saxon chroniclers probably wrote without exaggerated regard for truth) and of the heroic figure of Hereward the Wake. Memories of this vision, often seen, never to be forgotten, had prepared us for something really great and for prolonged enjoyment of it. As a fact, and it was one which intelligent study of a contour map might have prepared us for, the vision did not break upon our eyes until we were through Soham, and speeding along the causeway built by Hervé le Breton early in the twelfth century across the mere which stood where the golden corn is reaped and tied and carried every autumn now. When it came it was, be it stated with the more warmth now in that what is to be written shortly is not entirely the conventional view, supremely lovely. The air was of that pellucid transparency which is the sure prelude of rain. At a distance of four miles or thereabouts the eye could distinguish shades of colour, could follow all the delicate tracery of the central octagon and of the huge western tower; and it was natural, remembering that Ely is one of the largest cathedrals in Europe, to observe that, so excellent are its proportions, it does not impress the spectator from a distance by its length. This very excellent effect is due doubtless to Alan of Walsingham's fourteenth-century design for a grandly broad basis to the octagon tower under which he lies.
And here rhapsody must cease at the command of candour. I had visited Ely before as quite a young man; I had read much of the history of the cathedral, much concerning its architecture. Yet this time it failed to please as a whole, within or without, when viewed at close quarters. The octagon, regarded from a distance of not many hundred feet, looked to be wanting in substance rather than possessed of airy grace. Somehow or other, in the perverse fashion which is at once irresistible and fatal to cordial admiration, it suggested to my mind a ludicrous comparison. Resist as I might, I continued to think of wedding cakes. The western tower, so far as it was built by Bishop Riddell in the twelfth century, that is to say up to the level of the clerestory of the nave, seemed, and was, and is, proud, substantial, massive, impressive; but the Decorated superstructure, an octagon with turrets alongside, did not satisfy at all; nor do I believe that it would have been more satisfying even if the slender spire of wood, long vanished from its top, had survived. On me it produced, and I found that it has produced on other and more highly cultivated men, an impression of flimsy and jarring incongruity. Far other was the effect of looking at the honest red brick of the Bishop's Palace near the west door, for the gently warm tone of the bricks builded as our forefathers loved in the reign of the first Tudor king, was a joy and a rest to the eye.
Before entering the cathedral itself we took luncheon at the "Lamb," for a hungry man is an impatient sight-seer. But even after that, to one returning in contented mood, the outside of the western tower satisfied only up to the level of the clerestory. In fact, the original impression, whether it argued crass ineptitude or no, remained; and it is better to write oneself down a boor than to invent raptures which would be untrue. Inside our experiences were unfortunate. The ladies had gone before, had seen and enjoyed a good deal. My friend and I entered with due reverence. The vastness of the nave took seisin of us at once; but the charm was rudely broken. To us approached a verger of immemorial age—he had informed the ladies that he had been attached to the cathedral for half a century—wearing a velvet skull-cap and saying in strident tones, "It is a fine cathedral, gentlemen; have you seen it before?" "Yes," said I, shortly, and hoping to be rid of him, for to have a babbling guide at one's elbow on occasions of this kind is fatal to intelligent enjoyment. But the hope was vain. He joined himself to us and went on talking. In despair we divided forces, and walked briskly away in opposite directions. Nothing daunted he stood in the middle and talked louder than ever. So, after admiring the inside of the octagon, which is very fine, and failing to admire the roof of the nave, we left in despair without having studied the architecture in detail, without seeing the hammer beams of the transept roofs, without lingering over the original Norman work in the transepts. To us it was a loss and a bitter disappointment; but there are some inflictions that are beyond bearing, and this doubtless worthy old gentleman was one of them. Still, there are compensations in things, and nothing is made quite in vain. One of the objects for which this verger was created was that of saving the reader from the infliction of an essay on the architecture of Ely Cathedral by one who has, by his unashamed candour, demonstrated himself unworthy to indite such an essay.
The rest of this expedition may be condensed into a paragraph, and that not unduly long. Leaving Ely we reached Cambridge easily by a flat, straight, excellent, and perfectly uninteresting road, marked in the maps as Roman; but the wise man, for reasons already given, calls no road Roman until he knows for certain that it is such. There is, however, some evidence for this "Roman" road. Passing quickly through Cambridge and over the Gog Magog Hills without noticing them, we were soon at Royston, and from that point—to Oxford as it happened—we were beyond my manor. Two things happened, though, which may occur any day or night. It began to rain hard just after Royston, and went on raining, and we had trouble in lighting the acetylene lamps after Aylesbury. Neither mattered. It was something to have an opportunity of testing the cape hood, and the acetylene lamps were, after all, only a reminder that everything does not always go absolutely smoothly even in the best-regulated motor-cars. We got wet, of course, on the driving seat; but that was of no moment, for we were homeward bound; and as for the appetite that was carried home, the face glowing with clean rain, the feeling of overflowing health, and the dreamless sleep of that night, they were well worth a king's ransom.